


When You See Me (You'll Know)

by commoncomitatus



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, Gen, Healing, Historical References, Multiple Relationships, Other: See Story Notes, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 157,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-“Succession”. A call to arms calls Gabrielle back to a place she’d rather not go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings
> 
> 1) This fic deals at great length with the events of the S3 episode ‘The Deliverer’, specifically its climactic scenes, and places a heavy focus on the experience as a traumatic one. It doesn’t go into much more detail than the episode itself, but readers should be advised that it might be triggering and/or difficult to read.
> 
> 2) This fic also deals with themes of death and suicide. Again, this may be upsetting and/or triggering, so please proceed with caution if any of these things affect you.

***

“I saw you, you know.”

Gabrielle blinks. The streets are noisy, bustling and busy, so much so that she almost misses the words entirely. That’s deliberate, of course; she knows Xena far too well by now to think that she would keep her voice that low in a place so loud if she wanted it to be heard. She’s evading, the way she does sometimes when she wants to say something but doesn’t feel comfortable with it, when their journeys or their conversations or their lives bend a little too close to things like feelings.

It’s tempting to indulge her in moments like this. Xena is so forward most of the time, so seldom coy, and Gabrielle often finds herself playing along in spite of herself when it happens, pretending that she doesn’t hear or else feigning some non-existent distraction. It’s so rare that Xena gets that vulnerable look on her face, and Gabrielle can’t bear to be the one who breaks her.

Even now, it’s still so much of a struggle for someone like Xena; she is very aware of the person she’s become, the distance she’s travelled and all the ways it changed her, but she’s still so afraid to embrace that, to love the things that Gabrielle loves in her. Sometimes Gabrielle takes pity on her, understanding how hard it is, but she doesn’t do that now.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

Xena rolls her eyes, not even bothering to mask her annoyance. “Back there,” she says, with a vague sort of gesture. “With Mavican.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle feels heat flooding her face. Suddenly, she wishes she’d taken pity on her after all. “How…?”

“Ares let me watch.”

“Of course he did.” It’s just like him to torment her, even as he insists that he’s offering her an ‘opportunity for greatness’ or whatever his mind-game of the week is. Gabrielle wishes she was surprised; it might temper some of the disgust. “Guess you saw me fall on my face a few times, then?”

She doesn’t mean to sound so self-conscious, so shy, but apparently she does because Xena’s moody scowl softens to something close to sweet.

“Maybe.” It’s uncharacteristically hesitant; Xena knows Gabrielle as well, and she knows just how thin the ice gets when her ego is involved. “Saw you get back up a few times too. And I saw how you handled _that_.”

She gestures, none too gently, at the wound on Gabrielle’s shoulder. It’s painfully visible and visibly painful, and she doesn’t even pretend that it doesn’t hurt. It came without warning, a cheap shot from a hand-made projectile, and just like everything else Mavican did it found its mark with devastating effect. Gabrielle didn’t exactly make it difficult for her, either; just like she always does, she hesitated when she should have run, faltered where she should have fled. It wasn’t exactly her finest moment, and she’s not proud of it.

The pain was one thing, bad enough in itself, but it left behind a trail of blood that made for another problem entirely; it took a hot fire and a stick bitten right through to stem that, and a scream that humiliated her so much more than the pain. It embarrasses her again now, finding out that Xena witnessed it, that it wasn’t a secret, private weakness, but a visceral show, on display for the one person she didn’t want to see it.

It’s bad enough that Xena knows what happens, that she can see the wound as it is, but it’s almost too much to bear, thinking that she saw it at the time as well, that she saw it happen, saw her stumble and bleed and run away, that she heard her scream, saw her _cry_ …

She wants to cry now, too, albeit for very different reasons, but she doesn’t. She just says _“Oh”_ again, in a very tiny voice, and hopes that Xena reads her mood well enough to drop the subject.

She doesn’t, of course. When has Xena ever been able to read anyone’s mood? The smile drops off her face, and she leans in a little, catching the corner of Gabrielle’s lips in a tender kiss.

“You did well,” she says, and touches her cheek.

Gabrielle pulls away, startled by her own vulnerability, by how much it still hurts to admit to any kind of weakness in front of Xena. “It didn’t feel that way at the time,” she admits. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. I mean, I know you taught me, but…”

She doesn’t need to say anything more than that; one look at Xena’s face tells her that she understands. Knowing what to do in theory is a very different thing from having to put it into practice. Gabrielle has watched Xena burn closed wounds like this countless times before, and even endured it herself once; she already carries a scar on that shoulder, a permanent reminder of the first time she went through that kind of pain, and that should have been enough to prepare her for the second. She knew what it would take and she knew how much it would hurt, but actually having to do it, not just _by_ herself but _to_ herself, was something else entirely. Nothing in the world could have prepared her for that.

Mavican got her good. That sharp little rock lodged itself in deep, and the pain throbbed in rhythm with the blood dripping down her arm as she ran. She was breathless, dizzy after what seemed like no time at all, and entirely too aware of the trail she was leaving behind. Alone, afraid, and angry, what else could she do? Mavican had her cornered, outwitted and outmatched, and Gabrielle had no intention of making herself a sitting target as well. 

She did the only thing she could, what she knew Xena would have done. She built a fire, braced herself, and burned it closed.

She screamed, and not just once, the sounds silenced by the stick in her mouth, and she had to try it three separate times before she could fight the urge to flinch away. It was messy and clumsy, almost unbearably painful, and nothing at all like the last time. It was clean when Xena did it, quick and precise and over almost before the cry was out, but when she tried it on herself she found that her body reacted, pulling away before she could get it done. Three terrible times she fought and flinched and failed, each more painful than the last, and when she finally got the thing closed it was relief so much more than pain that made her gasp and sob.

 _“It’ll heal,”_ she said to Xena when it was all over, and flinched again when she tried to touch it.

She thinks it now, too. _It’ll heal. It might heal badly, but it’ll heal. It might hurt, but it will heal._ For once in her life, maybe the only time, she took care of herself. That means more than all the pain and all the failed fires in the world. _It’ll heal. It’ll heal because I healed it._

Xena’s hand slides down to find Gabrielle’s. She squeezes it for just a moment, then pulls back and puts a bit of space between them. Maybe she can sense the turn of Gabrielle’s thoughts, the way she so often does, or maybe she just wants to give her a little breathing room; either way, the air rushes into the spot she once stood, a cool balm against the still-hot wound.

“I’m proud of you,” she says, and there it is again, the low tone, the coyness, the way she seems to wish the world would drown her out before her feelings can be heard.

Gabrielle swallows. She wants to say _‘you shouldn’t be’_. She feels raw in a way she didn’t even just a few minutes ago, knowing as she does now that Xena watched her every move, that she saw and studied every silly mistake, every stupid decision.

All of sudden she’s hyper-aware of her own body, her clumsy steps and clumsier speech, so conscious of all the embarrassing little things she did back there in that forest with Mavican; it makes her blush, makes her cringe to think of how often lately she’s asked Xena to let her fight more, to give her more responsibility, to recognise her talents and her strength.

Ares told her that this whole stupid mess was a test. He told her that _she_ was the one he was watching, not Xena or Mavican, not anyone else. He told her that her skills were the ones on display, that her survival was what mattered; he told her that he was seeing her in a new way, seeing things he hadn’t expected to find in her, and flattered as she was that someone finally saw her and saw what she could do, Gabrielle let herself imagine that she deserved it.

She’s been struggling for a while now, more than she’d ever admit. With Rome and Caesar and Brutus, with the moment she saw Xena fall and not get up, with the moment she took up arms for the first time in months, the moment she spilled blood and killed… with the realisation a moment later that it wasn’t enough, that she would die, that _Xena_ would die, that they would die together.

She’s been struggling so much with all those things, feelings and people and moments within moments on top of moments. She’s been looking down at her reflection in water or glass, desperately searching for something familiar, and seeing only blood and tears. She did everything she should have done, everything she _could_ have done, but it wasn’t enough. Xena still fell, and so did she, and the two of them were nailed to crosses.

It didn’t matter in the end, what she did or how hard she fought. They died anyway. Bleeding from their hands and feet, gasping their last into the frozen Roman air, they _died_. It happened, all of it. They died and they came back, and Xena lost herself and found herself again, and Gabrielle became a warrior again. Months upon months of peace and love and kindness, and here she is again with weapons in her hands and the god of war smiling as he says her name. 

She’s still struggling. She’s struggling because it’s been so long, and she’s struggling because her freshest memory is of failure. She failed, and Xena fell, and that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

Xena says that she’s proud of her. Xena says that she sees her, that she will try to do and be better. She says that she’ll try to give Gabrielle what she needs, that she’ll help her to grow, to follow this new path she’s found. She says all the things that Gabrielle thought she wanted to hear… but now that she knows _‘I see you’_ also means _‘I saw you’_ , suddenly all she feels is shame.

She touches the wound on her shoulder, tentative and trembling. It’s so hot, so painful, it feels like it’s still burning.

 _Fire does that to blood_ , she thinks, and wonders what made her imagine such a violent, visceral thing.

*

They catch up with Amarice just outside town.

She’s fretting, anxious and upset in a way that Gabrielle frankly finds a little surprising. Amarice isn’t normally the worrying kind, and she’s definitely not the kind to let people see that she missed them; it’s too close to admitting that she cares at all. Gabrielle expects a stoic reunion, rolled eyes and a clenched jaw and _‘oh, were you even gone?’_ , but what she gets is quite the opposite, an Amarice who is so completely unguarded that Gabrielle almost wonders if they’ve got the wrong Amazon.

Her eyes are huge, her arms spread wide, like she can’t figure out whether she wants to hug them or slap them for running off and leaving her alone. Given that their usual reception is a scowl and a grumbled _‘whatever’_ , the sight of her like this is startling.

Apparently the hug wins out over the slap, but only for a moment. She launches herself right at Xena as soon as she’s in reach, an angry little firestorm of affection that lasts about a quarter of a second before she steps back and gives her a forceful, furious shove right in the chest.

“Where in the world have you been!?”

“Oh, you know.” Xena’s smiling. The look on her face is familiar, amused but fond, like she gets sometimes when Argo does something she’s not supposed to. “Around.”

“Around?” Amarice echoes, like she’s never heard the word before. “Like where? One second you’re all _‘be right back’_ , then the next thing I know it’s two days later! You can’t just pop up out of nowhere after two freaking days and be like _‘oh, you know, around’_ like it’s no big deal!” She whirls on her heels, rounding on Gabrielle, then stops short at the sight of her myriad injuries. “And what the heck happened to _you_?”

Gabrielle grimaces; she knows better than to try and shrug when her shoulder feels like this. “The usual,” she mumbles, and hopes that Xena doesn’t offer her own opinion on the subject.

“The usual.” Amarice rolls her eyes. “You know, I expect this kind of evasive stoic crap from Xena, but aren’t you supposed to be all about ‘honesty’ and all that ‘peace and love’ stuff? All ‘in touch with your feelings’ or whatever?”

“My feelings haven’t slept in two days,” Gabrielle tells her quietly.

Amarice studies her briefly, forehead crinkling like she’s trying to figure out whether or not she’s serious. After a beat or two she shrugs, takes her at her word, and says, “Sucks to be you, I guess.”

That’s true enough, and Gabrielle acknowledges it with a tired laugh.

She doesn’t want to know how she must look to someone like Amarice. It’s bad enough that her experiences are written all over her skin, that anyone within a hundred miles can see that she’s been through an ordeal, but the thought of having to explain it all is beyond exhausting.

_‘Oh, you know. Ares just put Xena and me into the same body then sent his newest pet lunatic after our blood. Nothing out of the ordinary.’_

It might not sound quite so stupid, she thinks, if she wasn’t the only one who looks like she’s been to Tartarus and back again. Xena didn’t get out of it unscathed either, of course, but like always she makes it look good. A few cuts and bruises, sure, but the grin on her face is enough to reassure anyone that she’s just fine.

Gabrielle isn’t like that. She’s never been like that. Stoic isn’t really a look that works with her face, and every time she tries to pull it off she just gets pity and a pat on the head. In any case, she _is_ worse off than Xena; she’s the one who took the brunt of Mavican’s brutality, and even if she was the sort of person who could pull off Xena’s cool carelessness, she has a feeling it wouldn’t work now anyway. After two days in the middle of nowhere playing cat-and-mouse with a warrior several times her superior, there’s not a single part of her that doesn’t hurt. Standing next to Xena, who looks like the whole thing was just another day in a simple, boring life, she doesn’t stand a chance.

Maybe she deserves all that gods-forsaken coddling after all.

Amarice certainly seems to think so. She leans in, foregoing as usual little things like personal space, and pokes at the wound on her shoulder.

“Looks painful,” she says.

“It is.” Gabrielle doesn’t even bother to hide the hiss when she pulls away. “So don’t touch.”

“Suit yourself.” Amarice shrugs and turns back to Xena, like Gabrielle is the unreasonable one in not wanting people to poke and prod at still-tender injuries. “C’mon, Xena! Spill already! Where _were_ you?”

Xena chuckles, humouring her like she so often does. “Ares did a god thing.”

She should know better than to say something like that. Amarice’s ravenous curiosity is pretty well documented by this point, and Xena knows her far too well to think that playing games will do anything other than make her push even harder. Honestly, at this point it’s a miracle she’s not bouncing up and down like a puppy crying _‘tell me, tell me, oh, please, please, please’_. If Gabrielle didn’t know better, she’d swear Xena was encouraging her.

Amarice doesn’t actually say _‘please’_ , but she does ask, wide-eyed and hopeful, “What kind of a god thing?”

Xena might be feeling playful, but Gabrielle is not, and her answer is as sharp as the sting in her shoulder. “The kind that’s none of your business.”

“Gabrielle.” Xena squeezes her hand again, reassurance with just a hint of restraint. “It’s complicated, Amarice.”

Amarice pouts, as sullen as a kid. “Oh, sure,” she gripes. “Leave me in the dark again. Like that’s all I’m good for.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, reaches deep inside herself for some measure of self-discipline, some ghost of the kindness and compassion that Eli taught her.

“No-one’s leaving you in the dark,” she says after a moment; blessedly, it comes out soft. “It’s just been a long couple of days, all right? Neither of us is in the mood for telling stories.”

She knows how that must sound, coming from her. Not so long ago she would have leaped on the chance to turn this adventure into a tale worthy of the greatest bards. Now, though, she doesn’t want that at all. She wants Xena to stop looking at her like she wants to kiss away every little scratch on her body, and she wants Amarice to stop asking stupid questions and poking at her open wounds. The last thing she wants right now is to be a gods-forsaken bard.

It should scare her, feeling like that, but it doesn’t. Maybe that should scare her too.

She wishes she knew how Xena can do all of this so effortlessly, how she can still stand so strong and steady even after she’s taken a few knocks. Gabrielle wishes that she could will her own body into that kind of obedience. She wants to lock her knees, hold her spine straight; she wants to look like Xena, to _be_ like Xena, and she can’t help feeling a flicker of resentment.

She must look so weak, and weaker still next to the strong, stoic warrior princess. Just once, she thinks, is it too much to ask that Xena look the same way? Is it so much to ask that _she_ wear her wounds on her sleeve for once? It would make the pain more bearable, would make the humiliation sting just a little less if Gabrielle wasn’t always the only one letting it show.

“Come on,” Xena says after a moment. It’s not immediately clear which of them she’s talking to, but they both snap to attention. “There’s no point in standing around clucking like a bunch of hens. I want to cover at least a couple more leagues before sundown.”

Gabrielle doesn’t ask where they’re going or why it’s important to cover any amount of ground in any amount of time; Amarice, willing to learn in this if not in much else, doesn’t ask either. They’re both familiar enough with Xena and her methods to know that the answers will inevitably be _‘I’ll tell you when we get there’_ and _‘because I said so’_. Sometimes it’s just better, or at least a whole lot easier, to nod and smile and live in blissful ignorance.

They walk together, the three of them, in companionable mostly-silence. Amarice is still being Amarice, nudging and badgering Xena for details of their latest adventure, and Xena is unexpectedly patient in dealing with her; she deflects and shrugs her off, but always with a civil tone. It’s definitely new.

For her part, Gabrielle stays a few paces back; she’s too drained to deal with either of them right now, so she tries to just keep out of the way. She can’t decide whether to feel jealous or touched by the way Xena deals with Amarice’s seemingly boundless curiosity; it’s been a good few years since Gabrielle herself was quite that green, but she’s at least mostly sure that Xena wasn’t nearly so patient with her questions, or so quick to encourage them.

 _Must be the Amazon thing,_ she thinks, though that doesn’t make her feel any better.

She and Amarice are both Amazons, but from what she understands their circumstances couldn’t be further apart. Gabrielle is an Amazon by chance, bad timing and a bad choice of words in a really bad moment foisting on her a title that she still doesn’t really understand. Like always, her fate was decided by her big mouth, not her talent.

The story she gets from Amarice is very, very different. To hear her talk about her tribe and her sisters and her old way of life, Gabrielle can tell that _Amazon_ is more than just a name or a title to her, that more even than the ideal it’s become for Gabrielle herself. Amarice wasn’t thrown into a random tribe like she was; her tribe her whole life, her whole world, the only one she can imagine.

Maybe Xena sees that in her as well. Maybe she recognises a little of herself in a young woman like Amarice, raised as a warrior and born with blood on her skin.

They’re strangely alike, Xena and Amarice; at the very least they share the same passion for the same things. Amarice is very young, almost as young as Gabrielle was when she first joined up with Xena, but she’s also fierce and strong and brave nearly to the point of stupidity. Four years ago, Gabrielle was none of those things. She was only young, and wished with all her heart to be the rest.

Four years is a long time, though, and now she’s become all of them. Slowly, devastatingly slowly, and with so many mis-steps it’s hard to believe she found the path at all, but here she is just the same. Or so she likes to think, anyway. She’s definitely no Xena, will probably never get close to what Xena is, but she’s come a long, long way from the girl she used to be, even from the girl that Amarice still is. She’s travelled such a great distance, endured so much to be what she is, to fight the way she does and have faith in herself the way she finally, _finally_ does.

It should be enough that she believes in herself, that she knows the things Xena refuses or struggles or fails to see in her. It should be enough that _she_ knows what she can do.

Most of the time, it is. _Xena will come around,_ she tells herself, again and again, and because she’s always been easily swayed she believes it. But then Xena smiles or laughs or gives Amarice that fond little look like she is all of those things, like she’s all but forgotten Gabrielle travelled any distance at all, and…

Well. It’s hard sometimes, not to take that a little personally.

Gabrielle isn’t the jealous type, at least not when it comes to Xena. It’s taken her a long time to get to that, too, but she flatters herself that she’s matured beyond it. And, yes, if she’s honest it’s not really jealousy that hits her when she sees the way they look at each other, the way they connect over things she still struggles with. It’s just _difficult_ ; Amarice is so much like a young Xena, but also so much like a young Gabrielle, and those two things fill her with strange and messy feelings.

It’s a problem. At her best, Amarice is idealistic, bright-eyed, hopeful; she’s a wash of light, full of all the things she might be, all the things she wants to be and tries to be. She is so much like Gabrielle once was, so much like the girl she left behind, abandoned or lost or both, but then she gets into a fight or an argument and all that light ignites into a warrior’s fire. She is so much like Xena when she’s swinging her weapons or trying to prove herself… but she is so much like Gabrielle after the fight is done, when she looks up with big eyes that say _‘please see me’_.

Gabrielle wonders if it’s easier for Xena to see Amarice because she learned from her first. It has taken Xena a very long time to learn even what little patience she now has; it should feel like progress that she’s practicing it now, but it doesn’t.

Honestly, Gabrielle is ashamed to think about it that way, to step back and see the bigger picture, to realise that Xena is the one putting into practice the very things that Gabrielle herself has always held so close. Xena is being patient, smiling and laughing and treating Amarice like someone who can become more than her potential; meanwhile, Gabrielle is seething and sulking in the background, licking her wounded pride and pretending that it doesn’t feel like a kick in the teeth. She should be encouraging this, she knows; instead she’s scowling about it.

Not that it should surprise her. If travelling with Xena has taught her anything, it’s that her ego has always broken so much more easily than her body.

*

It takes a while, but Xena gets her couple more leagues.

She and Gabrielle walk slowly, both tired and Gabrielle more than a little sore, and Amarice for once shows some patience in keeping pace with them. She’s still bubbling over with energy, though, and when they finally stop to make camp for the night Gabrielle can tell that it will be a good long while before she settles in to sleep. The energy isn’t a new look on her, but the restlessness is; Gabrielle doesn’t know whether to worry or just be grateful that at least one of them is alert enough to take the first watch.

Like always, Xena takes charge once they stop, gathering firewood and barking instructions at everyone else. Like always, even when they’re at rest and safely out of sight of man and beast, she acts like they’re in the midst of a war, like they’re going to be attacked at any moment. In her eyes, even the evening’s meal is a massacre waiting to happen. It breaks Gabrielle’s heart sometimes.

On a normal day, she might try to rein her in a little, remind her that they’re safe and that all three of them are able to defend themselves even if they weren’t. She might try to take some of the weight off Xena’s shoulders, offering to hunt their dinner or lay out their bedrolls, or else just nudge Xena an inch or two closer to the fire, get her to loosen her shoulders or lower her sword or remember how to smile.

She’s all but forgotten what a normal day feels like, though, what life was like in the days before Rome, before Caesar, before she picked up a weapon and started killing again, before she and Xena were killed in turn. It’s difficult to remember now what she felt in the days before all that, back when she could look into a crackling fire and seek out the places inside herself that were calm and at peace.

Now, after Rome and crosses and crucifixions, after Paradise and Hell and Michael, after Callisto and Eli… now, with all those things still burning inside them both, she just sits silently and lets Xena do what she wants. If that’s how she finds her peace, so be it. At least she has some.

Once she’s stoked the fire sufficiently high, Xena hands a stick to Amarice. “Keep it going,” she tells her, and swings up to her feet. “I’m going to see if I can catch us some dinner.”

Just as Gabrielle knew she would, Amarice protests. “I can do the hunting,” she offers, a little too cheerfully. “You and Gabrielle should rest or something.”

Xena snorts. “I don’t think so.” 

“But—”

“If you’re that worried,” Xena presses, cutting her off before she can finish, “you can keep an eye on Gabrielle.”

It’s hard to tell which of the two are more offended by that. Gabrielle huffs, muttering “I don’t need her to babysit me,” and in almost the exact same second Amarice blurts out “I’m not a babysitter!”

Xena looks at them both, lips twitching like she wants to smile but knows far too well what would happen if she dared to try. Not even the infamous warrior princess is much of a match for two sulking Amazons.

“Uh huh,” she says, trying just a little too hard to look just a little too casual. “Well, I’ll let the two of you work that one out on your own. I’ve got a meal to catch.”

With that, she stalks off, leaving Gabrielle and Amarice staring at each other with open mouths.

Gabrielle recovers first, being somewhat more used to Xena’s antics by now. She shrugs, shakes her head, and draws her sai out from her boots. They don’t seem any worse for Ares’s little game, but she settles in to clean and sharpen them anyway, not least of all because she needs a distraction. It keeps her hands busy, and that in turn keeps her mind loose, keeps her from thinking too hard, from feeling too much.

In any case, it’s been a long, long time since she last had weapons of her own, and she needs to get back into the habit of taking care of them. After she sent her staff floating down a river in India, she spent months avoiding violence of any kind, armed and otherwise, and now it feels as strange and new as it did all those years ago when she found an Amazon fighting staff thrust into her unwitting hands by an equally unwitting Ephiny.

Strange, how some things change so much and still stay so much the same. It makes her sad to think of it, makes her ache in some deep, intangible place.

It’s an odd thing to have to get used to, like learning how to walk again after being crippled. After so long avoiding this, sickened by the sight of sword or staff, bow or blade, afraid to even think of spilling blooding, it feels so strange to be doing it so effortlessly now, and so eagerly. It feels so new, so strange, to look down at herself and see a warrior once more, so distanced both from the little girl who wanted to be one and the young woman who couldn’t bear it any more.

She’s not sure where she is now, or where she’s going, but she knows how comfortably the sai fit against her palms and she knows that when she uses them they move like parts of her body. She knows, most of all, what she thought she would never know again: how it feels to hold a weapon that she knows can kill, and not feel afraid.

She knows that Amarice is watching her, but she tries to block it out. She’s already feeling exposed and self-conscious; the last thing she needs is an over-excited, loud-mouthed Amazon staring at her. She keeps her eyes on the sai instead, and thinks of Mavican. She remembers the rock tearing into her shoulder, remembers how fast the blood started to pour, the tracks of it down her arm and over the forest floor. The wound throbs, and she doesn’t realise until she touches it with tentative fingertips that Amarice is staring at _that_ , not _her_.

“You know,” she’s saying, voice just a little higher than normal, “that thing looks pretty gross.”

Gabrielle sighs. “It’ll heal,” she says, and clings to the truth of it.

“You sure?” For a second or two, Amarice sounds genuinely concerned. Not quite worried, like she would if it was Xena, but close enough that it makes Gabrielle sit up and take note. She masks it quickly, of course, clearing her throat and covering it over with bravado like she usually does, but the echo still lingers. “I mean, uh… look, I’ve seen stuff like that before, okay? And it can get really bad if it’s not…”

“Well, it _is_ ,” Gabrielle snaps. She wipes carefully along the length of the sai, trying to absorb some of the rhythm into herself and use it to steady her breathing. “Believe it or not, Amarice, I’ve been around longer than you. I’ve seen more than you have. And I know what I’m doing.”

Amarice glares. “Well, excuse me for actually caring or whatever.”

It’s a challenge not to smile a little at that. Amarice hasn’t been travelling with them for very long, and most of their time together has been fraught with one breed of disaster or another — dying Amazon tribes, Roman crucifixes, Xena’s lost memories, the list is endless — but even so, Gabrielle flatters herself that she has her figured out, at least for the most part.

Amarice favours flashiness and show; she likes big talk and big action even when she knows it’s probably not the brightest idea. She feels things very strongly, much like Gabrielle does, but in the very second she realises it she’ll rush on to deny that she ever felt anything at all. She’ll cut off any hint of compassion almost before it forms because she imagines it will make her look tougher. That she used the word _‘caring’_ at all speaks more volumes than she probably realises.

Gabrielle never stopped to wonder how Amarice dealt with their deaths. She’s been so preoccupied with what she was going through herself, what Xena was going through, what they went through together, that she never stopped to look across the campfire and remember that Amarice must have felt their losses as surely as they felt the nails go through the skin.

Amarice might not be an expert when it comes to feelings — she’s a little too much like Xena in that respect — but all that bravado and denial doesn’t mean much when she can’t keep control of her face; Gabrielle has seen it in her eyes, how much she cares, and it’s only now, as she catches the unspoken confession behind her words — not just _‘I care’_ but _‘I was scared’_ — that she sees for the first time how much of a nightmare the last few days must have been. She’s only just watched them die, and now to turn around and find herself alone all over again…

No wonder she took their Ares-induced absence so personally, Gabrielle realises, feeling more than a little chagrined.

“I’m sorry,” she says aloud. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s sweet that you care.”

“Pfft.” It’s no surprise that Amarice bristles now, resisting the feeling in the very same breath that she confesses it. “I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I _didn’t_. Just don’t want you getting yourself into trouble and making us go back to that stupid dive of a town, that’s all.”

Gabrielle chuckles. “Right. Because that would be the worst thing in the world.”

“Yeah, it would.” She musters a grin, but it’s watery. “You know, they didn’t even have a proper tavern.”

 _Or a proper healer,_ Gabrielle thinks, and forces herself to shut down that thought before it can quicken her heart. That doesn’t matter, she reminds herself. It’s just like she said: she knows what she’s doing. Xena has taught her how to treat wounds like this, how to close them cleanly, how to make sure they heal well afterwards. Recovery from this sort of injury is almost second nature now; there’s no reason to assume the worst just because Amarice is prone to needless panic.

Not that it’s really about that, of course. Gabrielle isn’t as naïve as she used to be, and four years as a growing bard have taught her the art of reading between the lines. Amarice’s panic is no more about her shoulder than Xena’s over-protectiveness is anything to do with Gabrielle’s ability to take care of herself.

It’s about Rome. It’s always about Rome. It’s about the crosses and the crucifixions, about the fact that they both died and no-one among them is handling it particularly well. For her part, Gabrielle is carrying on as best she can, staying strong and steady and honing her modest skills; it’s a promise to herself, and to whichever of the gods can hear her, that no-one will ever take her or Xena again.

It’s as healthy a coping mechanism as she can hope for, she thinks, but Xena has never handled these things as well as she does.

Xena focuses on all the things she shouldn’t: not that _they_ died, but that _Gabrielle_ did. She’s already signed away her own life — she did that long before they ever met — and as hard as she’s tried Gabrielle has never quite managed to break her of that martyr’s streak, the desperate need to prove her worth by sacrificing herself.

Xena would gladly take the cross again if that was what it took to keep Gabrielle safe; she’d lay down her life again and again, throw herself into harm’s way a thousand times, because it would hurt so much more to see Gabrielle suffer again. It’s the last thing Gabrielle wants, but it’s everything Xena does. It has been for so long.

Amarice is the same way, not that she’d ever admit it. She’s younger, more headstrong, but her attitude is so close to Xena’s, at least in this, that it almost hurts. She’s scarcely let either one of them out of her sight since they came back, clinging to Xena’s side like a puppy, asking questions she clearly doesn’t care about, making silly small-talk and making a nuisance out of herself. She is so afraid of losing them again, of being left behind and left alone, and just like Xena would throw herself into Caesar’s arms to keep Gabrielle safe, Amarice will do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t die on her again.

It’s heartbreaking, in its own way, and when Gabrielle speaks again it’s much more tenderly than before.

“Listen,” she says. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“Better not be.” Amarice huffs, but there’s a tremor in the sound that undercuts the forced indifference. “You two run out on me again and you’ll both be on your own. I’ve got real friends, you know. Friends who actually stick around. Friends who don’t just disappear when it suits them. Friends who don’t… who don’t just up and _die_.”

Her voice breaks on the word, and her face crumples, but she refuses to cry in front of Gabrielle.

Sighing, Gabrielle slips the sai back into her boots, shuffles a little closer, and reaches for her hand. That Amarice lets her take it without so much as a word of protest says even more than the crack in her voice. Gabrielle caresses her knuckles with her thumb, soothing her, and digs down deep for a smile.

“That’s not going to happen again,” she promises.

Amarice studies her face for a very long moment, her hands for a longer one. She’s got her mouth halfway open, poised on the edge of a question, _‘how do you know?’_ or _‘are you sure?’_. It’s hard to tell why she doesn’t just ask, whether it’s her bravado overriding her fears again or whether she knows that she wouldn’t want to hear the answers. Either way, she keeps the thoughts to herself, and when she pulls her hand free, poking at the fire just a little too hard with Xena’s stick, the shadow that falls across her face has nothing to do with the sinking sun. She’s uncharacteristically somber, and for a moment or two uncharacteristically silent as well.

When she does speak again, after a minute or two, it’s with a kind of quiet desperation; it gives away just how young she still is, and Gabrielle knows that she would never let such a tone slip if Xena was here. She’s got her gaze locked on Gabrielle’s shoulder again, like she can’t tear it away, and she’s biting her lip like she’s nervous.

“You tell me if it gets bad,” she says again. She’s clearly trying to make it an instruction, but it comes out more like a plea. “I can fix it. I’m good at that. So you… you tell me if it gets bad.”

Gabrielle has a sneaking suspicion that she’s over-selling her own talent somewhat. Amarice might be an Amazon, might even be as skilled in combat as Ephiny once was, but if her personality is any measure to go by she’s hardly the type to sit down and study the art of healing. She’s far too much like Gabrielle for that; at least, she’s too much like the girl Gabrielle used to be, the girl who left Poteidaia to seek out a warrior’s life. Back then, she was so hungry to prove she could take care of herself that she never bothered learning how to do it.

Maturity and experience broke her of that, and no doubt Amarice will outgrow it too, but at least right now Gabrielle doubts she could even set a broken bone by herself, much less ‘fix’ a wound as deep and painful as this.

Gabrielle, on the other hand, can do far more now than she ever could before. Whatever over-protective warrior princesses or panic-stricken young Amazons might think, she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She knows how to nurse a wound as it heals; she knew how to clean it and close it in the first place, didn’t she? She’s not about to drop dead just because it still hurts a few hours later. Xena’s thinly-veiled worry is obnoxious enough; she doesn’t need Amarice’s as well.

She doesn’t tell her any of that, though. Ill-conceived and posturing though it is, the gesture was still a thoughtful one, and from someone who’s not exactly comfortable with the idea of caring. Whatever her own feelings on the subject, Gabrielle won’t let something like that go unrewarded.

Amarice is looking at her again, urgency and anxiety lit up behind her eyes. “You _tell me_ ,” she whispers again. “You tell me if it does.”

Gabrielle summons a smile. “I will,” she lies.

*

Xena comes back a little later with a string of fish.

Gabrielle doesn’t bother to ask where she found a river all the way out here. When it comes to Xena and fishing, the answer is usually that she just _does_. It’s one among an ever-increasing number of her self-professed skills that Gabrielle has taken to filing away under _‘vaguely improbable, but go with it’_. Most of the time, it’s easier than asking; that way lies madness and endless headaches.

Naturally, Xena doesn’t mention it either. She just sits down in front of the fire, warms her hands for a few luxuriant moments, then sets to work turning her catch into something edible. Knife in one hand, cloth in the other, she uses her foot to nudge a few of the fish over to Amarice.

“Gut ’em,” she says, an order that leaves no room for argument.

Amarice, never one to disobey Xena, squeaks her surprise but does as she’s told.

Gabrielle watches them work, impatient for a task of her own, but Xena never offers one. She’s tearing quite happily through her own pile of fish, clearly not needing any help, and she’s content to sit back and let Amarice make a fool of herself with hers. It’s obvious things would go more quickly if she just let Gabrielle do it, but apparently she wants Amarice to learn because she doesn’t interject.

It’s odd; for all her bragging and bravado and _‘in my tribe’_ , Amarice is still very much a novice at this sort of thing. To tell the truth of it, Gabrielle would have expected more from an Amazon of her age, even one as stubborn and wilful as Amarice; all her big talk doesn’t add up to much in the way of action, but it’s hard to fault her when she tries so hard.

Not that it helps Gabrielle to feel any less like a waste of space. She waits a few more minutes, more hopeful than really expectant, then finally gives up and clearing her throat.

Xena doesn’t even look at her. “Problem?”

It’s pretty obvious that she knows the answer, going by her tone; she just wants Gabrielle to embarrass herself by saying it out loud. Well, Gabrielle isn’t above rising to that particular bait, and certainly not right now. After what Ares put them through, Xena should know better than to look at her and see the quiet, peace-loving Gabrielle of the last few months. That Gabrielle died in Rome, just a few short hours before her body did.

“What about me?” the new Gabrielle asks, and lets Xena see the difference between them. “Anything I can do?”

Xena opens her mouth to say _‘no’_ , to insist that she needs to rest her shoulder and the other sundry marks that Mavican left on her, that she hasn’t really slept in two days and she needs to take it easy. That argument might have held some water a couple of days ago, but Xena’s whispered promise still rings clear in both their ears, the gentle assurance that she does see her, that she will learn to respect her, that she will accept what she can do. She has to know that Gabrielle will hold her to it.

 _“Sometimes I have trouble facing it,”_ Xena admitted, just after Ares disappeared, _“but I promise I will.”_ Gabrielle looks at her now, locks her jaw, and silently says, _what better time than the present?_

She knows this game too well; she knows what Xena’s trying to do. One evening of this — _‘you need to rest’_ or _‘you’re hurt’_ or _‘you’ve been through a lot’_ — and they’ll slip back into the same old routine they’ve always had. Xena will be the warrior again, Gabrielle the sidekick, protected and kept safely out of danger, and nothing will ever change at all. Xena might feel safer that way, but Gabrielle does not, and she won’t let it happen again. Change needs to come, and it needs to come now.

Of course she doesn’t need to say the words out loud. Xena’s breath catches, throat spasming as she swallows the words before they can get out, and Gabrielle knows that she heard it all. She always does; Gabrielle never really needs to say anything, never needs to voice the depth of what she’s feeling. With a glance and a grimace, Xena reads every word she’s thought, and reacts accordingly.

“Sure,” she says, not even bothering to hide her reluctance. “Maybe take a look around? Make sure there’s no-one hiding nearby, waiting to sneak up on us.” She musters a primal grin, a little forced but sharp just the same. “Can’t be too safe round these parts.”

It’s a token gesture, and they both know it. As much as she can get unnaturally obsessed with her fishing sometimes, Gabrielle knows that Xena must have already checked out the surrounding area probably a good dozen times. After two days spent fighting to the death, she wouldn’t leave anything to chance. But of course, it’s not really about being ‘too safe’. It’s not about Xena giving Gabrielle some unnecessary, pointless task; it’s about giving her any task at all.

It doesn’t have to mean something. A first step is better than no step at all, and today’s meaningless little task can grow tomorrow into something of significance. It’s one of the few things that Gabrielle was able to teach Xena.

“Need some help?” Amarice asks, a little too brightly.

She’s not even bothering to pretend it’s a selfless offer; clearly, she just wants to get away from the fish guts. _Some Amazon_ , Gabrielle thinks, shaking her head with a smile.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. “It’s probably all clear out there anyway.”

“You never know,” Xena says, but the sparkle in her eye says she does.

*

Meaningless or not, Gabrielle takes great care in her task.

She scouts the surrounding area maybe three times, stalking the shadows like a hunter tracking its prey, and tries not to think about how far she’s strayed from her former path.

Xena isn’t the only one who came back from the dead with parts of her changed or missing. Gabrielle has never been violent, at least not the way she feels now. Even back in the days when she felt she had to prove herself, to fight or be left behind, she never much relished the thought of shedding blood. Since she came back, though, since she woke in the cold and dark, stiff and sore and haunted by memories of Hell and Callisto and Michael, she’s found herself more than once almost frenzied in her haste to reach for weapons instead of words.

It’s not like her. She’s never been the kind of person who seeks out the most violent course, but here she is, so much so that even the god of war — the paragon of everything she stood against — could look at her and see a potential heir. It’s so far from the person she used to be, the person she believed she should be.

But then, what good was that person in the end? Death on the cross was a torture, a lifetime of blood and pain lived out over the course of too many hours, and she will drive her blade through a thousand men before she will let them do that to her or to Xena again.

She’s just about to circle back to camp, content that they really are safe, when a rustle in the bushes tells her that she’s not.

It’s a low sound, almost inaudible but far too clumsy to be an animal. That was one of the very first things Xena taught her, how to tell the differences between man and beast; Ephiny taught her too, the cleverest Amazon tracking techniques, and she puts both of those lessons to good use now.

Eyes keen, piercing the shadows for any sign of movement, she’s more than ready by the time it comes. A shiver in the brush, a glint of light against metal, a flash of long, rust-coloured hair. _A woman, then,_ Gabrielle realises, and perhaps a year or two ago that might have given her pause for a moment or two, made her think twice and wonder if that made it more reasonable, a friend rather than a foe.

Not now, though; her memories are as keen as her sai, and she’s seen far many powerful women to doubt one now. She travels with two, after all, and her shoulder still carries the brand of a third.

One day, years from now, she might even count as one herself. _One day._

For now, though, she makes the most of what meagre power she has, anticipating the worst and taking advantage of her superior position. She surges forward without hesitation just like Xena taught her, lashing out with her sai in a flurry of sharp, whip-fast blows to drive her unseen opponent back.

She’s no expert with the sai, at least not yet, but she knows enough of what she’s doing to get the job done well and quickly. That’s another thing Xena taught her, another lesson she’s wrapped around her heart like a shield. It doesn’t matter how a weapon is made to be used; what matters is how she uses it in the moment that matters. She uses the sai now, instincts singing like she was born with them in her hands, jabbing hard and low and lightning-fast and never stopping for breath.

She’s aiming more to unbalance than cause any damage, and when it happens — a grunt and a gasp giving the moment away — she capitalises with her legs, a long sweep to the backs of the knees that lands the woman flat on her back in the grass.

Not pausing for even a second, Gabrielle drops to a crouch, knees tight on either sides of her enemy’s hips. She’s got an odd, foreign look about her, not Greek, and definitely not Roman; she’s tall, perhaps Amarice’s height, but built strong and stocky. Her hair is long and tangled, loose in a style that Gabrielle thinks she might recognise. It kicks against the edge of her memory, a maddening tickle that she can’t quite reach.

She recognises the symbols inked onto her skin as well, though she can’t recall exactly where from; it’s an odd pattern, knotted and repeated, and it makes Gabrielle’s skin itch in a way she doesn’t understand. It’s something she knows, a forgotten memory rushing up to the surface, but she can’t place it and she can’t afford to try.

She pushes the thought out of her head; it’s not important right now. With a twist of her wrist, she flips one of the sai outwards, presses the sharp point against the woman’s throat.

“Who are you?” She keeps her voice down. The last thing she needs is for Xena to hear and come running to ‘rescue’ her. “And what do you want from us?”

“From _you_?” The word is a laugh, high and cold and mocking. Her voice is strange as well, another kick to the corner of Gabrielle’s mind. “I want nothing from you, child. I’m here for Xena. Take me to her.”

Gabrielle growls. It’s been a long time since anyone was foolish enough to call her _‘child’_ to her face, but the insult still burns, and all the more so after the last few days. She’s in no mood to take orders from strange women who sneak up on her in the forest, but even if she was she certainly wouldn’t be obeying her now.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to negotiate,” she says, as cool as she can. “Xena’s under my protection.”

Phrasing it like that gives her a fresh kind of strength, a fount of courage that takes her by surprise. The woman beneath her seems to sense that, and her expression shifts to something a little more guarded.

“Is she, now?”

“Yeah, she is.” She straightens her shoulders, ignoring the way her wound still hurts. She feels like a kitten trying to roar at a lion. “And you’re going nowhere until I’m satisfied that you’re no threat. Am I making myself clear?”

“Quite.”

And just like that, without even missing a beat, Gabrielle is the one on the ground with her face in the dirt and a knee digging into her back.

She didn’t even blink, much less let down her guard, and she has no absolutely idea what just happened or how. All she knows is that her arm is being twisted up behind her at such a vicious angle that she has no choice but to drop her sai or risk popping her shoulder out of its socket.

“Hey!” she cries, almost tearful as the weapon clatters uselessly to the ground.

“I’d advise you not to struggle.”

Gabrielle acquiesces, not because she was told to but because she knows that there would be no point. She’s trapped fast but not particularly tight, and with no real pain beyond the twist in her already-injured arm. She has seen Xena hold down her enemies using exactly this technique before, and she knows just how much damage it can inflict when she wants it to; the fact that she’s not being tortured into obedience says that her enemy is not really her enemy at all. At the very least, it says that she’s a reasonable sort, if not averse to dramatics.

“What do you want?” she asks again, a grunt made heavy with surrender.

“I told you. I’m here for Xena. You’ll take me to her now.”

“Thats not—”

The words are cut off in a cry, sharp but bitten off before it can become a scream. Gabrielle is not above admitting she’s outmatched, but she’ll be damned to Hell all over again before she lets anyone else hear her scream today. Her arm is twisted higher, high enough to hurt now, and her wounded shoulder is shoved into the dirt with enough force that the heat surges up into agony. It’s mostly just a warning, controlled and with no real intent to harm, but Gabrielle’s already sore all over after two nights being toyed with by Mavican and her body is not prepared for any of this. Tears prick behind her eyes, acid churning in her stomach, and she chokes.

“I don’t like to repeat myself.” High above her, the strange rust-haired woman sounds so rational; she never ever raises her voice at all. “Now, one last time: take me to—”

This time, blessedly, she’s the one being cut off, the one crying out in surprise and unexpected pain. Gabrielle chokes again; in a burst of blinding relief, the pressure is off her shoulder, the weight falling away from her back as though…

…as though her opponent has just taken a blow to the head.

Which, of course, she has.

Gabrielle doesn’t need to lift her own head to know what’s happened, but she does it just the same.

“Xena,” she says, with no surprise at all.

Of course it’s Xena. Isn’t it always?

Smug self-satisfaction is a good look on her. She’s got a smirk on her face the size of a small country, one hand on her hip and the other stretched out to catch her new chakram as it comes soaring back to her. She’s a portrait of panache, posing as though for a painter, and Gabrielle honestly doesn’t know whether it’s relief or bitterness that makes her want to cry.

Xena sighs, exaggerated and so, so cocky. “I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I?”

Gabrielle presses her face back into the dirt, not dignifying that with a response. She licks her lips, tastes salt, and heaves a frustrated, tearful sigh.

 _Bitterness_ , she decides. _Definitely bitterness._

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

Xena drags them both back to camp.

She holds Gabrielle by her uninjured arm, gentle but firm, and keeps their uninvited guest a few steps in front of of them, prodding occasionally with the point of her sword. It doesn’t take a genius, or even someone who knows her as well as Gabrielle does, to see that she’s furious; it’s bad enough that she didn’t flush out the intruder herself, but that she sent Gabrielle straight into her path is unforgivable in her mind. Gabrielle wants to point out that she had everything completely under control, but with dirt still smudged all over her face she suspects it won’t hold much water. In any case, the damage is done: what meagre willingness Xena might have had to hear the stranger out is long gone now, and all three of them know it.

No-one says a word until they’re back at camp. Xena gives Gabrielle’s arm a light squeeze, a not-so-subtle way of checking that she’s all right without having to annoy her by actually asking the question, then nudges her towards the fire.

“Fish is ready,” she says. “Eat if you’re hungry.”

Gabrielle is definitely hungry. The problem is, she has to go through Amarice to get to the fish, and as they’ve already established today Amarice is not nearly as tactful as Xena when it comes to asking questions. She’s already staring, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, gaze bouncing from Gabrielle to their visitor to Xena and back again like she’s watching a game of discus. Gabrielle has never seen someone’s eyes literally fall out of their head before, but she’s pretty sure Amarice’s will if she’s not careful.

When she finally recovers herself, she pokes Gabrielle in her wounded shoulder. Again. “What did you do this time?” she asks, like the answer isn’t right in front of her. “Did you get in trouble again?”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes, and tries to distract them both by reaching for a fish. “Does it look like I got in trouble?” she mutters, grateful that at least this time the only thing injured was her pride. “She was sneaking around in the bushes. I caught her, Xena caught both of us. Does that sound like trouble to you?”

It’s a stupid question, and she probably deserves Amarice’s eye-rolling, incredulous “ _Yes_.”

Xena, of course, has all but forgotten them both by this point. Her eyes are locked tight on her captive, and right now they’re spitting fire.

“All right,” she snaps, voice sharp as her new chakram. “You wanted me, you got me. Now talk to me before I take your head off.”

The woman snorts at the threat, but sobers very quickly. “Just to be clear,” she says, “it was your friend, not I, who struck first. I didn’t come here looking for a fight. Only for you.”

Her accent is thick, strange in a way that sounds familiar in a bone-deep sort of way; she speaks slowly, and enunciates each word very carefully. It makes Gabrielle’s spine itch, and she’s not sure why.

If Xena feels the same way, she doesn’t let it show. She shoots Gabrielle a brief glance, as though to verify the facts; she doesn’t really need to — it’s no secret that Gabrielle’s temper has been on a short fuse ever since they came back from the dead — but she does it anyway in a futile feint at giving her the benefit of the doubt.

“Fine,” she says, when Gabrielle offers no contradiction. “Get on with it.”

Taking the meagre victory for what it is, their visitor-slash-prisoner bows her head. “My name is Andred,” she says. “I’ve come a long way to find you. My queen—”

“Queen?” Amarice blurts out, interrupting seemingly without thinking. Gabrielle almost smiles; it’s not exactly a surprise that she would latch on to that word. “You’re an Amazon?”

“No.” It’s Xena who answers. Her face is a thundercloud now, a storm waiting to break, and Gabrielle feels a knot of anxiety starting to squeeze her stomach. “She’s not an Amazon.”

Amarice frowns, confused and utterly failing to read the mood. “But she just said…”

“Be _quiet_ , Amarice.”

It’s very rare that Xena raises her voice like that, to friend or foe. Against her enemies, she never needs to; her presence and her reputation usually do the job for her, and a hand on the hilt of her sword is more than sufficient warning to anyone stupid enough to try anything. With the people she’s chosen as her companions, it’s rarer still; Gabrielle’s not sure she can even remember the last time Xena shouted at her. The thought makes her swallow hard, abandon her half-eaten dinner, and reach for her hand.

“Xena?” But Xena doesn’t look at her. “Xena, what is it?”

“Nothing you want to know about,” Xena says. Gabrielle opens her mouth to point out that she’d sooner hear almost anything at this point than be kept in the dark, but of course Xena doesn’t give her a chance; she’s glaring at Andred again, as though the moment never happened at all. “If your ‘queen’ is who I think she is…”

“She is,” Andred says, without hesitation.

Xena grunts. “Well, then,” she snaps, “you can remind her that my debts are paid.”

Gabrielle is starting to feel like she’s listening to two mythical creatures speaking in tongues. Xena hasn’t been this aloof in years; no matter how unreasonable a person is, no matter how unsavoury their methods, she’ll always hear them out before dismissing them out of hand. Oh, she might have to put the pinch on them first, but for at least as long as she’s been heeding Gabrielle’s influence she’s at least made the effort to listen a bit before casting someone aside. The ruthless, couldn’t-care-less warlord she used to be is a thing long buried, a ghost of the distant past, and the Xena that Gabrielle knows and loves would never turn someone away without even letting them finish a sentence.

“Aren’t you even going to hear her out?” she asks.

“No,” Xena says; somehow, she manages to sound flat and sharp at the same time. “I’ve heard more than enough already. We’re not going back there.”

 _Back there._ It’s a strange, unsettling choice of words. It’s as if she already knows, as if the whole conversation has already happened, a request already made and rejected in the space between their words, like Gabrielle and Amarice really weren’t there at all.

Gabrielle takes some small measure of solace, if not much, in looking over her shoulder and seeing that Amarice is as perplexed as she is; she and Amarice may disagree on most things, but there’s an odd kind of comfort in moments like this, when Xena is being strange and not explaining herself, to look around and see that she’s not the only one who feels lost at sea.

She wants to ask questions, to press and push until Xena gives in and gives her an answer, but her throat is suddenly dry and her heart won’t stop pounding long enough to let her try. It’s so rare that Xena gets like this, and it’s never good when she does. Maybe she’s right after all: maybe Gabrielle really doesn’t want to know.

Amarice, as ever, has no such qualms. “What the heck are you even talking about?” she asks, carving through the tension like she doesn’t sense it at all. “Back where? Where are we going?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Xena says, very carefully.

Amarice blinks, almost comical. “Okay, uh huh. So where aren’t we not going?”

“ _Amarice_.” Xena’s jaw is so white, her eyes so dark. “We’re staying right here. I’ve already paid my debts to that gods-forsaken island, and I’m not…” She looks back to Gabrielle, and her entire face changes, twisting into fondness and something that seems achingly close to regret. “I’m not taking her back there.”

Gabrielle swallows hard, feeling suddenly sick. _That gods-forsaken island_ , Xena says, and that’s all she needs to hear. There’s only one island in the known world that would make Xena look at her the way she’s looking at her right now.

“Britannia,” she whispers. She’s never heard her own voice sound so small.

Xena nods. She still doesn’t look at her; Gabrielle wonders if maybe she can’t. “Andred,” she says, pointed in her pronunciation. “ _Andraste_. One of your goddesses, isn’t she? Victory or something?”

Andred nods back, quick and very serious; unlike Amarice, she seems acutely aware of the tension here. “Queen Boadicea thought the name an omen,” she explains. “That’s why she sent me to find you.”

“It must be important if she’d come crawling to me again,” Xena mutters, almost to herself. “We parted on civil terms the last time we spoke, but we’re not friends.”

From what little Gabrielle recalls of their last visit to Britannia, _‘not friends’_ is something of an understatement. Xena and Boadicea have a chequered past, something involving the theft of an army and a betrayal of trust; it happened at the peak of Xena’s warlord days, and that’s all Gabrielle needed to know about it. Xena told her the story at the time, explained it all with her usual attention to detail, but the nightmares that came after rent the moment from her mind. They both found themselves with more important things to worry about than some long-buried feud with a woman they didn’t expect to see again.

“It’s not your friendship she seeks,” Andred is saying. “It’s your sword.”

Her voice fades out as she starts to explain, and Gabrielle feels her chest constrict, her thoughts growing thick and fuzzy, chaos and clatter churning inside her head, drowning everything out.

She’s on her feet before she even realises she’s moved at all. The ground pitches under her feet, the world spinning around her; she feels so very dizzy. A part of her wants to cry, but she won’t do it in front of Xena.

“Excuse me,” she hears herself mumble. Her voice is distant and shaky; it sounds nothing like her. “I’ll be right back.”

“Gabrielle…” Xena’s voice is distant as well, weighted down with worry.

“It’s fine.” She’s swaying on her feet, both hands balled into fists at her side, vision blurring. “You… you three can just… carry on. I’m going to… I need some fresh air.”

“Gab—”

“Fresh _er_ air,” she blurts out, interrupting with a feverish kind of desperation. “Cleaner air. I mean, like, fewer fish and less fire and not so many…” She shudders. “…islands…”

She knows that Xena will call her name again, can already feel it on the air, but she doesn’t stick around long enough to hear it. She whirls on her heel, staggers into the underbrush, and doesn’t look back.

*

As soon as she’s alone, she falls to her knees.

It’s the strangest feeling. Alone, isolated, she expects the tears to come, but they don’t. She expects the memories to wash over her, to pour out of her in screams and shrieks and sobs, but that doesn’t happen either. Nothing does.

She can feel her body shuddering, a great quaking inside her chest; the force of it threatens to tear her asunder, but it’s too quiet to be heard. It’s like she’s broken out of herself, like it’s not really her at all. Her whole body is taut and twisting, her blood turning to ice in her veins, her nerves reacting to stimuli that don’t exist, but it’s all so far away. She can feel herself on the edge of something, some visceral, physical reaction, but nothing happens. She just kneels there, breathless and trembling, listening from some faraway place to the sound of her own voice, impossibly high, choking “ _Britannia_ ,” over and over and over.

She doesn’t know what to feel. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to feel, and she definitely doesn’t know what she wants to feel; she’s not sure she really wants to feel anything at all but at the same time anything would be better than this trembling, devastated nothing. It’s all a mess inside of her, the chaos of memory and the void of knowing that she’s been through so much worse since she last heard that name, since she last saw the place.

 _Britannia_.

It shouldn’t affect her any more. She knows that. So much has happened since a young, naïve girl got sucked into something so much bigger than she knew. She lost herself and found herself again; she lost Xena and found her again. She died and Xena died, and they both came back from that too. The two of them, together and apart, have been through so much more than that naïve young version of herself could ever have dreamed of, and she has taken far more lives now than one manipulative cultist. She’s a different person, a thousand worlds away from the idealistic little thing who was used and twisted and violated.

She’s _strong_ now; she has worked so hard to become strong. The name of a place shouldn’t scare her any more. The idea of it shouldn’t leave her paralysed.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t scream or shriek or sob like she expects to; maybe that’s why her body shudders but doesn’t do anything more. It knows, in a way her mind and her heart still can’t accept, that she’s beyond that now, that she has grown and evolved and matured, that she is not a victim of her past any more. She let go of Hope when she found peace in India; she let go of the guilt of letting her live and the grief of watching her die — no, of _killing her_ — not just once but twice. Sh let go of all the things that Britannia did to her, all the things it made her do and be, let go of every mark it ever left on her. Her body remembers the pain, but it knows too that it is over. There is no trace of Hope left in her now. That has to be why it doesn’t react. It has to be.

What feels like a lifetime later, a hand drops down onto her shoulder.

The contact is fleeting, tremulous, but it’s enough. The fingers are slim and young, the palm only a little calloused and the grip nowhere near strong enough to be Xena’s. _Amarice_ , Gabrielle realises, and she doesn’t know whether she’s relieved or disappointed.

On the one hand, she’s not sure if she could face Xena right now, if she could turn around and look her in the eye knowing as she does what Britannia put Xena through as well, all the awful things they both did because of that place, because of the monsters that neither of them ever mentions. On the other hand, she can still feel it simmering inside of her, a kind of pain that she can’t reach by herself, and all she wants is for Xena to wrap her in her arms and tell her that she doesn’t have to.

Amarice, slim and young and not at all strong, is a distant second. But she is here and Xena is not, and so Gabrielle tries to smile.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Her voice isn’t strong either, and it gives away just how inexperienced she truly is. It’s been a long time since Gabrielle spent any amount of time with someone as young and green as she used to be, someone who is like her but not her, and she’s still not sure how to adapt to that. “You… uh… you kinda took off in a hurry…”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle sighs and slowly lifts her head; Amarice might not be Xena, but she deserves to see her. “Sorry about that.”

“Stupid thing to be sorry for,” Amarice says. She sounds like she means it. “Didn’t come here for apologies, dummy.”

Gabrielle chuckles, weak but sincere. No-one has called her that in years, probably not since she was a child back in Poteidaia, running around with Lila and pulling her hair. “Well, what did you come here for? Is Xena worried?”

“Nah, but I was.” She flushes a little, then ducks her head, as though embarrassed by the confession; it’s almost touching, and almost the opposite. “I mean, not like _worried_ worried. That’d be weird.”

“Right. Weird.”

“Yeah. So not like that or anything. It’s just… you know, I didn’t know people could actually turn that shade of white. Like, I didn’t know that was, you know, _possible_.”

“I have many skills,” Gabrielle manages weakly.

Amarice barks a mocking laugh. “Sure you do.”

In a strange sort of way, it does help. Amarice isn’t the most comforting soul in the world, and Gabrielle knows that this kind of tenderness doesn’t come easily to her; Gabrielle has always been the sensitive soul, the one who can smile through anything and help others to do the same, and she knows that it’s a struggle for someone like Amarice, a warrior at heart just like Xena is. Still, though, she tries, and the careless back-and-forth is unexpectedly grounding; it brings Gabrielle back to the present, to here and now and the company of a woman who has never been to that dreaded place. It’s a gentle reminder of who and where she is, of how far she’s come and all the things she’s done in those two long years.

“I’m okay,” she says, straightening up a little. Amarice never actually asked if she was all right, or if anything was wrong in the first place, but it feels like a natural transition to reassure her just the same. “Really, I am. It was just a bit of a shock, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I saw that.” Amarice sits herself down on the ground, settling in next to Gabrielle without waiting for an invitation. Again, she ignores the concept of personal space, but this time Gabrielle finds that she doesn’t mind. “So, Britannia, huh? That weird little island up past Gaul or wherever?”

Gabrielle nods. “Xena and I have been there before.”

“I got that,” Amarice says. “Xena kind of gave it away with that whole ‘never going back there’ deal. Jeez, she can be so dramatic sometimes.” She rolls her eyes, though Gabrielle can tell it’s mostly just for show; she worships the ground Xena walks on and they both know it. She would never speak ill of her unless she was trying to soften a hard moment like this. “So, what’s the deal with that? _Britannia_. You run into some bad weather out there or something?”

“Or something.” Gabrielle closes her eyes, tries to breathe slowly and steadily like Eli taught her to in moments of conflict like this. “Amarice, this… this isn’t really a pleasant subject for me, okay? You’re better off asking Xena.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” She’s trying a little too hard to be casual, but there’s a catch in her voice that gives her away. “The way she started shouting at that weirdo after you left, you’d think someone had sacrificed a baby or something.”

Gabrielle flinches. She doesn’t mean to, but the reaction comes out of nowhere and she can’t stop it. It’s not exactly the truth, but it cuts close enough to sting, close enough to make her remember things she doesn’t want to.

For just a second or two, she’s back there all over again. Not in the Amazon village, the place she usually goes when she remembers, overwhelmed with grief and guilt and pain as Hope and Solan’s bodies burn, as Xena walks away. Not there, not like usual, but the other _there_ , the one that came first. She’s back in Britannia, in Dahak’s temple with Khrafstar and Meridian, screaming over the blood-soaked altar, over her blood-soaked hands. She can see it all, can feel it all, and it’s all so real, so real, so _real_ …

“No…” she whispers, and the taste of it almost chokes her. “By the gods, _no_ …”

“Whoa.” Amarice sounds stricken; the sound of her voice brings Gabrielle back to herself a little. “Was it something I said?”

Gabrielle shakes her head. She wills herself to return completely, find Amarice’s face, to force a smile for Amarice’s sake, to use Amarice’s presence to tether herself. _You’re here,_ she thinks. _You’re here, you’ve grown, you’re strong_.

“No,” she manages, when she finds her voice again. “No, of course not.”

“You sure?” Amarice asks. She sounds a little shaken, like she’s not sure she really wants to know. “Jeez, what the heck happened in that place, anyway?”

“Amarice…”

“I’m serious.” Her voice is high, almost fearful. “Can’t be rougher than getting crucified, right? I mean, what could be worse than getting strung up on a cross?”

Gabrielle tries to laugh, but the sound won’t come. “Actually, that happened too,” she says. “Funny. I always forget about that part.”

“You…” Amarice’s jaw drops, and her face turns almost exactly the same shade of white she just insisted wasn’t possible. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all.” It’s amazing, she thinks dully, how calm she is, talking about getting nailed or tied to crosses without even blinking. Amazing, in the most devastating way, how simple crucifixion seems next to demon gods and blood sacrifice and Hope. “I mean, it wasn’t exactly the same. You don’t come back from a real crucifixion more than once in a…” She cuts herself off, choking over the word _‘lifetime’_. She doesn’t know why it sticks in her throat like it does. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Amarice does, but it’s obviously not helping very much. “But…” she stammers. “I mean… okay, not a real crucifixion, whatever the heck that means. Fine. That’s great. Congratulations on not dying. But they still hung you on a freaking cross! How the heck do you just forget about something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

That’s true. She really doesn’t know. Even now, even after everything else that happened out there, even after she learned the hard way just how much worse things could be, she still can’t figure out how it can slip her mind so easily and so often. Even now, it’s hard to reconcile the vision of herself strung up on that cross with the fact that it happened, that it really was _her_ up there, not some silly girl who looked like her.

She was lonely. She remembers that much. She felt so helpless, so frightened, a split-second away from having her legs broken, from dying in agony and all alone; she would have given anything to not die alone. She remembers that as clear as daylight, but when she tries to see it through the lens of something traumatic her vision gets blurry and it all just dissolves. 

There’s a vague memory there, she knows, and the certainty that she survived. The whole thing is a great big _‘what if’_ , nothing more, the shadow of something that almost happened but didn’t, and every time she tries to make herself remember how it felt at the time, the other stuff comes up first, and her soul breaks before she has a chance to wonder what might have happened if her legs had.

Amarice looks devastated, though, like there really is nothing in the world worse than hanging from a cross. She looks like she’s talking to someone who has been through a terrible ordeal and doesn’t seem to realise it. Gabrielle does realise it, of course, quite profoundly, but she has hindsight that Amarice lacks; she knows what a far worse ordeal feels like, knows that there are more painful things to endure than Roman injustice.

After everything else that happened, Meridian and Khrafstar and Dahak and Hope, after everything she went through in that temple and for a lifetime afterwards, after everything that awful island put her through, it almost feels like a luxury to look back and think, _oh, that happened too_. It’s like a footnote, a hastily-scribbled half-thought scrawled out at the bottom of a scroll already far too full.

“Gabrielle?” The name is a tremor. Her lips are trembling too. “Gabrielle, you’re kind of scaring me.”

She reaches out, slow and very carefully, and touches her fingertips to the wound on Gabrielle’s shoulder. The pain is very sharp and very sudden, a pulse of heat and hurt that sears the skin and the muscle underneath; the contact is very brief, as light as a feather, but it brings her back with all the force and efficiency of a punch.

Gabrielle wonders if Amarice has dealt with this sort of thing before, if she has friends or lovers or strangers who have seen or endured terrible things, who lose themselves inside bad memories. She wonders if she’s seen exactly this before, someone broken and lost inside their own head, trapped by things that hurt more than any part of their body. She wonders if Amarice knows what she’s doing, if she realises that her touch is a grounding point, a tether to the physical, to the kind of pain she can endure. She wonders why it helps so much.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She takes Amarice by the wrist, thumb against her pulse, but she doesn’t push her away from her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to.”

Amarice’s fingers skitter over the wound. She traces the burned edge, the jagged places where the skin is still red and very hot. “Gabrielle…”

“It’s okay.” She swallows thickly. With a great force of will, she pulls away and stumbles to her feet. “Really. It’s all okay.”

Amarice doesn’t stand with her. She’s staring up at her with that same broken look on her face, the one that knows she’s looking at something so far beyond her own understanding, so much deeper than anything she herself has seen or known or been through. Amarice is so young, so inexperienced; as an Amazon she’ll have been through training that most young women will never see, but still there is so much of the world that is new and unfamiliar to her. There are so many things, both terrible and wonderful, that she has yet to learn. It’s a blessing and a curse, sometimes both at the same time, and Gabrielle won’t drive away her hunger for experience by forcing her to see the worst before she’s had a chance to discover the best.

After a few searching moments, Amarice finds her voice again. “You sure?” She clears her throat, as though self-conscious. “I mean, uh… you don’t look good at all. And that thing on your shoulder is really hot. And you… you _died_ … and I… uh…” She winces, shakes her head. “You’re really sure you’re okay?”

Gabrielle bends over a little, extends a hand to help her up. “I’m sure,” she says. “Old wounds can’t hurt us any more.”

Amarice takes a deep breath, and lets it out very slowly. It takes her a long moment to accept the words, to shut off the panic and find a little faith, but she does it. It’s easy to convince her, Gabrielle knows, because she wants so desperately to believe it; she is so afraid of the truth that she would believe any lie in the world made to make her feel safer. Gabrielle remembers entirely too well how that feels; she remembers gulping down whatever nonsense Xena fed her, whatever hollow placations she needed in a given moment, anything to stem the tide of _‘what if?’_ and _‘how bad?’_. She remembers how safe she felt swallowing Xena’s sweet lies, and marvels at how far she’s come that this time she’s the liar.

At long last, Amarice takes her hand. Gabrielle hauls her to her feet, struck once again by the pain in her shoulder, the muscles pulling and tugging at the wound, stretching the place where it’s heated and hurting. She grits her teeth, bites down the grimace, rides it out in silence. It’s not an old wound yet, she knows, but it will be. One day, they all will be.

She just has to live long enough to see them heal.

*

Xena is shouting when they get back to camp.

She stops when she sees them, though, cutting off in the middle of a word; it’s hard to know whether that’s for their benefit or whether the sight of them derailed her train of thought, though Gabrielle suspects the former. She can tell that it’s taking a great deal of restraint for Xena to stay where she is, to keep from rushing to her side and hauling her into her arms like she does sometimes when she knows Gabrielle is feeling vulnerable.

She wonders what stops her. She’d like to flatter herself that maybe Xena does see her after all, that maybe she finally understands her need for a little dignity, but she has a sneaking suspicion it’s more that Xena doesn’t want to make a scene in front of a stranger. Either way, she stays where she is, and Gabrielle’s heart feels ready to burst; her stubborn pride wouldn’t really want the embrace anyway, but her body still misses it.

“You all right?” Xena asks, keeping her voice even.

“Yeah.” She sits down in front of the fire, warms her hands and tries not to think of a different kind of flame. If Xena notices the way she’s trembling, she’s tactful enough not to mention it. Gabrielle clears her throat, forces herself to focus, to think of this as any other unexpected request. “So, what’s the situation?” she asks. “Why us, and why now?”

Xena clenches her jaw. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, very seriously.

“I think it does,” Gabrielle tells her. She turns to address their visitor. “Andred, was it?”

“Indeed. My apologies for humiliating you.”

Gabrielle bristles. “I wouldn’t say you…” But of course that’s not what this is about. She’s being toyed with, she knows, and she won’t rise to that sort of bait from anyone but Xena. “Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Mhm.”

She’s not an easy person to talk to; that much is obvious. She’s constantly on-guard watching every move and every breath, searching every moment for an opening. Gabrielle offers her one; judging by the look on her face, Xena hasn’t exactly been willing to listen, and someone should.

“What’s so important that you’d come all this way?” she asks. “Xena and Boadicea aren’t exactly on good terms with each other.”

“They are not.” Apparently even she is aware of that much. Comforting. “But Xena’s talent in military matters is unparalleled.”

“My talent for slaying Romans, you mean,” Xena mutters, annoyed by the feigned diplomacy. “Well, I’m done with that. Gabrielle and I already died to rid the world of Caesar. It can defend itself for once.”

“Xena…”

“ _Gabrielle_.”

Gabrielle sighs. She’s in no hurry to go back to Britannia, but she’s never been able to turn away from the word _‘defend’_. She turns back to Andred, wondering if she’s aware of what happened in Rome, whether it would take days or weeks or longer for such news to spread to Britannia. How long were they in Hell, anyway?

“Caesar’s dead,” she tells Andred. “I don’t know how long it took you to find us, but—”

“No.” Doubtless still thinking of their fight, Andred talks to her the way Xena used to, like a kid who doesn’t know one part of the world from another. “Not Caesar, little one. The world has moved on from his death, and so has his Empire. Our struggle is with Suetonius.”

Xena clenches her jaw again, visibly aggravated; the name clearly means something to her. That’s not exactly a surprise; she seems familiar with most names. To Gabrielle, of course, it might as well be another language entirely, but she’s used to Xena’s intimate acquaintance with what seems to be half the world’s population. She doesn’t question it this time, ashamed of her own ignorance, just leaves it to Xena to fill in the blanks like she usually does.

“Suetonius is harmless,” she says, not really speaking to either one of them. “If Boadicea can’t handle him without my help, she’s even less of a warrior than I thought.”

“You underestimate him,” Andred counters, a little too quick and a little too keen. “Ah, but my queen told me that you would. She told me that you would be so chequered by your conflicts with Caesar that you would deny anyone else as a like threat.” Her expression shifts, darkening for a moment, like a snake readying to strike. “Just as you did last time.”

Xena roars at that, a violent, terrible sound. Gabrielle shudders, and bites back the urge to cover her ears. She isn’t usually so affected, so frightened by Xena’s outbursts; it’s not a rare occurrence, after all. Maybe there is a part of her that still can’t shake the memories of Britannia, of Khrafstar and Dahak and that moment in the temple, because common or not the sound of Xena’s cry sends tremors through her entire body, an unpleasant sensation that she can feel right down to her bones. She is so uncomfortable, and that’s not a feeling she usually associates with Xena.

She chokes out her name, _“Xena,”_ like a plea, but of course Xena ignores her. Just like the last time, the only thing she can see is her own hatred.

“Get out of here,” she snarls at Andred. She has one hand on the hilt of her sword, knuckles white; it’s obvious even to a foreign stranger that she is deathly serious. “I’m done cleaning up other people’s messes, I’m done putting the people I love in danger for wars they shouldn’t have to fight, and I am _done_ with that gods-forsaken island. Tell Boadicea to fight her own damned battles for once.”

“Xena!”

It’s Amarice who interjects, voice high but steady. Gabrielle is grateful; she wanted to do the same, but she didn’t trust her voice not to break. Amarice holds her ground like a true Amazon, and she doesn’t flinch when she catches Xena’s eye and holds it.

This is new. Amarice doesn’t often stand up to Xena, and all three of them know it; she questions her often, whines and complains and makes demands, but she never flat-out challenges her authority like this. Gabrielle definitely understands that sentiment; it was a good few years before she herself found the courage to speak up like this when she thought that Xena was being rash or unfair, and Amarice hasn’t been here for nearly as long as she has. It’s a testament to her courage, if also to her ignorance of this particular subject, that she does it now.

Xena studies her, acknowledging the bravery for a second before dismissing it, and her, out of hand. “Stay out of this, Amarice.”

Amarice doesn’t, of course. Once she’s made a decision, it’ll take a speeding chariot to make her let it go. “Well, uh, I _would_ … I mean, it’s none of my business, and you and Gab have this whole ‘tortured past’ thing going on in Britannia and with that Bowda… Boode… uh…”

“Boadicea,” Gabrielle offers, as much help as she’s capable of giving at this point.

Amarice grunts her thanks, but doesn’t look away from Xena. “Her, right. I know you two have your issues or whatever. But come on! You can’t just turn your back on these people and not even hear them out. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be one of the good guys now? All ‘power to the meek’ and all that stuff?”

Xena breaks the contact, turning away to glare at the fire, like this is all its fault. “I said ‘stay out of this’,” she snarls. “This is not your decision to—”

“She’s right,” Gabrielle blurts out. The words surprise her almost as much as they seem to surprise everyone else. With as much diplomacy as she can muster while shaking from head to toe, she turns to Andred. “Could you give us a few minutes?”

Andred huffs, clearly annoyed at being ordered around by someone she already bested in combat, but she does as she’s told all the same. That will earn her a few points with Xena, Gabrielle thinks, though probably not many.

“I suppose it will do no harm to patrol the perimeter,” she says, as gracious as Gabrielle could reasonably hope for.

“Great,” Amarice blurts out, as soon as she’s gone. She’s beaming, but Gabrielle can tell it’s all for show. “Now, about that ‘I’m right’ thing…”

It’s difficult not to smile at that — even at her most obnoxious, Amarice is almost unfairly endearing — but Gabrielle does her best. She’ll never be able to convince Xena if she can’t even stand toe-to-toe with a tiny sullen Amazon.

“You too,” she says softly.

Predictably, Amarice pouts. “But… but I’m the one who’s _right_.”

Gabrielle does smile. She can’t help herself. “Amarice…”

“ _Go_.”

That one comes from Xena, loud enough that it startles them both. Gabrielle feels uncomfortable again, sweat pricking under her skin, like it’s not her Xena but the other one, the one she hasn’t been in a great many years.

Amarice, blessedly, knows better than to argue with her when she’s in this sort of a mood. “Fine, fine, I’m going already.” She cuts a glance at Gabrielle as she goes, though, uncharacteristically serious. “Make her _see_ , okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” Gabrielle says, and hopes that’s enough.

*

“No.”

At this point in their relationship, the instant rejection doesn’t surprise her at all. Honestly, she expected far worse; at least Xena went through the motions of letting Gabrielle get her alone first. Usually, she doesn’t even get that far.

Gabrielle sighs, braces herself for a struggle. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”

“ _No_.” Xena’s glaring now, throwing up her hands. “No, what I ‘know’ is that I am done with this. I am done defending people who can’t be bothered to defend themselves. I am done putting you in harm’s way for a war that isn’t yours. I am done watching you hurt and suffer and _die_ for mistakes I should never have made in the first place. I am _done_ , Gabrielle. For once in my life, I’m saying ‘no’. For once in my gods-forsaken life, I’m going to walk away and let these people fight their own battles.”

It’s a compelling argument, but Gabrielle can’t afford to listen too closely. “You know you can’t do that.”

“Watch me.”

“ _Xena_.” Her voice breaks, belying her own feelings, the hidden places deep down inside where she is so frightened of going back to that dark place. “I don’t want to go back to Britannia any more than you do. I don’t want to fight any more Romans or any more battles or… or any _more_. I don’t…” She shakes her head, swallowing back the sob that rises up in her chest; if she lets it out, she knows she’ll lose. “I don’t want any of this. I really, really don’t. But we can’t just close our eyes and pretend we never heard these people begging for our help.”

“Yes, we can.” Xena’s eyes are bright. “For once in our lives, Gabrielle, we _can_.”

“And what happens if they’re slaughtered? What happens if we get word a week or a month from now that their entire army was taken by this Suetonius? Xena, you know what Rome does to its prisoners. You know what it does to its _conquests_. You know better than anyone. And you know… I know that you know it’s on our conscience now. Whether we want it or not, you know that it is.”

“What I ‘know’—”

“Xena, don’t. They asked for your… for _our_ help. If we turn our backs on them now, whatever comes next is our fault. We might as well have nailed them to the crosses ourselves.”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Xena is furious now, almost violent. Gabrielle can see how heavily the responsibility and the injustice is weighing on her; she can only pray that it’s heavy enough to bend her into doing the right thing. “They’re the ones calling on people they have no right to call on. I paid my debts the last time we were there. Boadicea—”

“—wouldn’t have asked you if she didn’t need you,” Gabrielle finishes quietly. “You know that, Xena. You know _her_. She’s as proud and stubborn as you are, and you’re not friends. Do you really think she’d come begging you for help if she had any other choice?”

Xena sighs. Gabrielle has been with her long enough to recognise what that means, to watch with held breath as the fight starts to drain out of her. It’s her fatal flaw, the one they both know: she’s never been able to sustain a fight with Gabrielle for very long.

The thought makes Gabrielle’s heart ache a little, makes her feel guilty in a way she never has before. Most of the time she thrives on that weary little sigh, on the moment she knows she’s gotten her own way, but this doesn’t feel like it usually does.

She want to go to her, wants to put her arms around her and hold her and kiss her and tell her that they will get through this together, that they get through everything together, that once more into the breach won’t kill them any more than crucifixion did. They’ve been together for so long by now that it’s second nature in moments like this to be there for her, to be the kind one, the compassionate one, the one who can reconcile her pain or their pain with the certainty that they are doing the right thing.

She aches to do all of that, but she doesn’t. Not this time. Xena wouldn’t thank her for it right now, and in any case she’s not sure she could move even if she tried. Her limbs are still trembling, and she feels fractured and frightened inside; she’s not sure she’s capable of giving the kind of moral support she knows that Xena needs. If she gets close enough, she knows that Xena will see the cracked and fragile things inside of her, the countless little weaknesses she doesn’t want to admit. She’ll see it, see _her_ , and then this conversation will be over.

It’s for her sake that Xena is resisting this, Gabrielle knows, and she will not give her any more fuel for that. She will not let her name be used as a weapon. She will not be twisted into a martyr without her consent. _Never again_.

“Gabrielle…” Xena’s voice doesn’t crack, of course, but Gabrielle can tell that it’s taken a great deal of strength to say her name out loud.

“Xena, please.” She has to win this. Whatever the cost to them both, they have to do what’s right. If they don’t, what’s left? Why did they come back at all, if not to do good? “You promised you’d see me. You promised you’d try, at least. Well, try now. See me now, and understand that this is the right thing to do. Understand that we… that _you_ … Xena, promise me you won’t turn away from what’s right because of me.”

“I’d turn away from it a thousand times for you, Gabrielle. You know that.” She sounds so lost. Her tone hasn’t changed at all, but Gabrielle can hear it as surely as if she was swallowing back tears. “This isn’t about me seeing you, or letting you prove yourself, or whatever you think it is. It’s about … dammit, it’s about _Britannia_.”

“I know what it’s about.” Gabrielle takes a deep breath. She feels lost as well, and broken, but none of that hurts as much as looking at Xena and seeing it reflected in her. “By the gods, Xena, don’t you think I know what it’s about? But this… don’t you think I have the right to choose for myself whether I go back there or not?”

Xena shakes her head, deeply sad. “You’d make the wrong choice,” she says, leaning in to touch Gabrielle for the first time, a tender brush of her fingertips as she pushes the hair back from her face, from the still-bloody gash that Mavican left across her hairline. “You always do.”

“Sometimes I do,” Gabrielle admits. “But even the wrong choice is _my_ choice. You can’t protect me from this. And you promised me that you wouldn’t try. You promised to let me fight, Xena, so let me fight _there_. Let us fight together.”

Xena’s blinks rapidly a few times. Her eyes are very bright. “It’s not our fight,” she whispers, tragically soft.

“It’s never our fight,” Gabrielle says. She’s blinking too. “But somehow we always end up fighting anyway.”

*

By the time Amarice and Andred get back, they’re agreed.

Well, Gabrielle is agreed, anyway. Xena is mostly just sulking, annoyed like she always is at having been defeated, even as anyone with eyes could have seen this outcome from a dozen leagues away.

Once, not long after Amarice joined them, Xena joked that _“what Gabrielle wants, Gabrielle gets”_ , and there’s not a soul among them who can’t see the truth in that; even in something as nightmarish as this, a devastating journey to a corner of the world that carries great pain for them both, still Gabrielle gets what she… well, maybe ‘wants’ isn’t the right word here. But she won. She always does. It doesn’t feel much like a victory, but she knows that it is. Lives will be saved from this; surely that’s enough.

Andred is grateful, and surprisingly gracious. “Thank you,” she says, when Xena tells her they will be going to Britannia after all. “On behalf of Queen Boadicea, her people, and myself.”

She extends a hand. Xena takes it, gripping tightly enough to leave a bruise. “You can thank me when it’s over,” she mutters, and goes back to scowling into the fire. “Until then, keep it to yourself.”

To no-one’s surprise, she insists that they hold camp for the night; she might have yielded to taking the journey, but she’s certainly in no hurry to get moving. Gabrielle, exhausted and still reeling from two nights fighting off Mavican and Ares, doesn’t even try to protest. She’s won the only argument that really matters; whether they leave tonight or in the morning, the journey won’t be much shorter.

Andred turns down Gabrielle’s offer of a spare bedroll; she settles herself on the far side of the fire, sprawled in the grass with nothing to cover her, and is snoring within minutes. Gabrielle wonders what conditions are like for Boadicea and people, whether they sleep out under the stars like this or if they have tents to keep them warm and sheltered. She didn’t exactly spent much time among the soldiers the last time they crossed paths. She didn’t do a lot of things she wishes she had.

For herself, sleep is evasive, and she knows that it won’t come easily to Xena either. Ironic, she thinks, and more than a little frustrating that the two people who need it the most are the ones too haunted to rest.

It’s a good few hours before she gives up the effort entirely, the moon very high and the stars very bright. The fire’s still crackling, but it’s low, and the air is getting chilly; she pulls the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, sitting up and moving to hunch over the flames. She’s shivering so hard that her bones rattle and her muscles ache, and she blows on her hands to try and warm them, as though she can will herself to believe that it has anything at all to do with the temperature.

She closes her eyes, remembers a much hotter fire. Hotter, higher, blinding and burning and searing the skin, a fire she still feels sometimes when she’s feverish or when she wakes in the middle of the night soaked in nightmare sweat. She blocks the vision out, blocks out the memory too and replaces it with a fresher one, cleaner if no less painful. She forces herself to think of Mavican instead, of the rock lodged in her shoulder, of the lower, softer fire she made to burn the wound closed.

It makes her feel stronger to think of that flame instead. It makes her feel braver too, a reminder of the lessons she carries inside of her now. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how desperately her body screamed at her to stop, still she didn’t back down; she tried and she tried again and she kept trying until she did what needed to be done. Badly, yes. Clumsily, definitely. She has no doubt that the scar left behind will be ugly and crude, an ill-fitting companion to the one that Xena gave her years ago. She doesn’t care; ugly or not, this one is _hers_.

It doesn’t matter if it festers, if Amarice is right and it gets bad or dirty or worse. It doesn’t matter what happens from here; she knows that the wound will heal. She _knows_ that it will. She’s too stubborn to let all that hard work amount to naught in the end.

She wishes that Britannia could be so easily fixed, but she knows it won’t be. Britannia is a wound that has festered for almost two years. It was a flame that tore it open; she doubts another will be enough to close it.

She glances over at Xena’s bedroll. The body inside is as still as the night, unmoving and not making a sound. That’s how Gabrielle can tell she’s awake; she’s never so still when she sleeps.

“Xena?” she whispers.

She doesn’t really know what she wants, or what she expects, until the name is out and she’s holding her breath in anticipation. Xena is incredibly stoic, even when she’s not asleep; she appreciates her privacy, and once they settle in for the night she prefers to be left alone with her thoughts. Gabrielle is the opposite of that; too often the midnight silence feels like a weight over her head, too much and too thick and too oppressive, frightening in the nights when her thoughts are dark. This is far from the first time she’s cut through the quiet like this, desperate for Xena’s touch or her voice.

When Xena can’t sleep, she lies still and conserves her energy; if her mind can’t get the rest it needs, she makes sure that her body at least gets as much as it can. It’s a talent she’s tried to teach Gabrielle more times than either of them can count, but to no avail. Gabrielle can sleep like the dead when her mind and body are in harmony, but when insomnia strikes it takes an army to make her stay still. She gets restless, uneasy and uncomfortable; every nerve inside of her ignites, setting fire to her blood, her bones, to everything until she can’t hold herself down.

Xena holds her on nights like that. She complains about it, of course, muttering and grumbling about Gabrielle’s sharp elbows and cold feet; she makes a drama out of it every time, but still there’s always a smile on her face when she does it. She throws back her blanket, throws open her arms, and extinguishes the fire in Gabrielle’s chest like it’s nothing at all.

Gabrielle wants that tonight. She didn’t even really realise that was what she was after until she heard Xena’s name escape her lips, until she felt the ache in her chest spread at the sound of it. It’s more than just restlessness and discomfort this time; she’s feeling helpless and frightened as well, and she needs so much more from Xena than a smile and a little feigned drama. She needs to know that they’re still _them_ , that Xena is still there and will be forever, that even if they don’t agree on this, still _always_ means the same thing to them both. They both have their own nightmares to face in Britannia, their own demons to defeat, and Gabrielle needs to know that it will be all right, that they will still be together when the darkness fades and the demons are dead.

Xena raises her head just enough to catch her eye. “Gabrielle?”

Gabrielle swallows, inexplicably embarrassed. “Uh… hi.”

It comes out like a whimper, high and hopeful. Xena sits up a little bit, eyes narrowed as she studies her face. Even with the moon and the stars and the fire, it’s very dark, but it feels like she’s piercing every part of her, like she’s cutting straight through the skin and the surface, down to the feelings underneath, to all the things she can’t or won’t voice.

“Gabrielle,” she says again.

It’s lower this time, like a command; the sound of it makes Gabrielle’s stomach hurt. She wants so badly to ask for what she needs, to let her eyes get dim and watery in the firelight, to look Xena in hers and say _‘hold me, Xena, please’_. She wants so badly to forget the part of her that is stronger than she was the last time she went to Britannia, the part of her that is a warrior now, the part that has grown and matured and found her own path, to forget all the parts of her that want Xena to see all of that, to see _her_ and find something to be proud of.

All of a sudden, she wants to be young and small again. She wants to be that naïve, stupid girl who got in trouble the last time they visited Britannia. She wants to lose herself in that person, in the memory of being young and broken, of being _allowed_ to be broken because she was young. She aches to be the version of herself who was not ashamed to admit that she wasn’t strong.

Of course she doesn’t admit it now. Of course she doesn’t tell Xena that she wants to be held, that she needs the comfort of her arms and her warmth and her smile. She definitely doesn’t ask her to throw back her blanket and throw open her arms. She just whispers her name again, _“Xena,”_ like a prayer, and wonders why she sounds like someone she’s never met.

Xena doesn’t let on that she’s seen any of her feelings. Gabrielle knows that she must have — she always does — but still she looks as though her name is all she heard. She stares at her for a moment, then shakes her head and lies back down. She doesn’t throw back her blanket, and she doesn’t throw open her arms.

“Go to sleep, Gabrielle,” she says, and turns away.

Gabrielle feels like she’s been struck a blow. She sits there for a long, long moment, reeling and waiting for the sting to subside. Xena has never turned her away like that before, has never once closed her arms or her blanket or her bed. 

It comes more naturally to her now, since they first became intimate, since ‘sharing a bed’ became less about warmth and compassion and more about wandering hands and mouths and a different kind of heat; it’s a new kind of comfort, one they’re both still getting used to, but Xena gives it freely.

She gave it freely before, too, but it was different. Gabrielle remembers those early years; she was a tiny little thing, delicate and fragile and silly, afraid of her own shadow. The night was dark and the animals sounded more frightening than they were, and she knew perfectly well that she was annoying. Xena must have thought of her as little more than a child, must have known even then that she would need to overcome such childishness if she wanted to survive, but even back then she never turned her away. Even then, she threw back her blanket, threw open her arms, and held her until morning.

Not now. Not this time. Gabrielle has never felt so rejected.

It’s maybe a few minutes later, though it seems like so much more, that she hears something close to her side. It’s a sort of shuffling, sniffling sound, and then there’s a thin, fractured voice whispering her name.

Gabrielle doesn’t need to look up to know who it is. “What’s wrong, Amarice?”

It comes out much harsher than she means it to, a revenant of her feelings bleeding into her words, but she doesn’t apologise. Amarice doesn’t seem to notice, and why bring attention to it if she’s unoffended? She shuffles closer, shivering a little in the dark, and when she raises her eyes to catch the moonlight Gabrielle recognises entirely too well the secret wishes she finds in them.

“Nothing’s _wrong_.” She’s still whispering, though, and Gabrielle has done this enough times herself to understand what it really means, to read the words between the words. “Jeez. Can’t a girl say ‘hello’ without an inquisition?”

Gabrielle softens, summons a small smile. “Of course you can,” she says. “I was only asking.”

Amarice huffs, and uses the exhalation to bring her even closer to where Gabrielle is sitting. They’re within easy touching distance now, and Gabrielle feels her heart melt just a little. It’s adorable, the way Amarice genuinely seems to think that she’s being subtle about this. She really believes that Gabrielle won’t see through all the posturing, really believes that she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on. It makes Gabrielle smile; she distinctly recalls thinking exactly the same thing back in those humiliating early weeks. In her own eyes she was the most subtle person in the world when she inched her bedroll closer and closer to Xena’s, all the while assuming that she hadn’t noticed.

Amarice scuffs the dirt with her toes. “Nothing’s wrong,” she mutters again, a little more vulnerable this time.

Gabrielle bites back a chuckle. Her heart feels tender now, partly bruised and partly balmed. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“I _could_ ,” Amarice huffs, like a warrior responding to a challenge. “It’s just… I’m kinda cold…”

It’s hard not to laugh, not to recognise herself in the coded words, the shy looks, the way she plays up her youth and her sullenness and pretends not to care as much as she obviously does.

Gabrielle has been there herself, countless times; it feels like a dozen lifetimes ago now, but it wasn’t. Four years feels like forever when you’re young, but Gabrielle remembers all too well the first time she said _‘I’m cold’_ when she wasn’t cold at all. She remembers what the word really meant, and she remembers the way her heart seized and swelled when Xena understood it too, when she held her until the shivers stopped, until she stopped having to pretend it came from the chill.

Amarice’s eyes are very wide and very wet. Looking at her, Gabrielle sees herself, the girl she was and the woman she’s becoming. For the first time in days, she feels strong.

“Come here,” she says, and throws back her blanket.

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

She wakes to dazzling sunlight, with no memory of having fallen asleep.

Amarice is curled up against her side, face buried into the crook of her neck and breath warm against her collarbones. She’s still out cold, a dead weight pressing down on her, sleeping the sleep of the dead just like she always does. Gabrielle has often marvelled at that; Amazons aren’t exactly known for a tendency to sleep deeply, but Amarice sleeps so soundly that a full-fledged war could be raging all around her and she’d never even notice. It’s oddly endearing, and all the more so for Gabrielle, who is used to being the butt of all the _‘look who finally woke up’_ jokes herself.

Sadly, they don’t stay peaceful for very long. Gabrielle’s arm is stiff and sore, and when she tries to nudge some feeling back into it she knocks Amarice’s head and rouses her a little.

“Mm…?” Drowsy as she is, Amarice is in no hurry to extricate herself, or to waken fully. “C’mon, Eph, five more minutes…”

Gabrielle smiles. She can’t help herself; she always does when she thinks of Ephiny. It’s the one thing she and Amarice had in common during those early weeks when they couldn’t agree on anything at all. Gabrielle was so high on Eli’s path of love when they first met, refusing to even pick up a weapon at all, and Amarice was a hot-headed, self-styled ‘butt-kicking Amazon’; it was little wonder they didn’t get along at the start. Still, the one common thread they’ve always shared is how deeply they cared for Ephiny. Gabrielle still misses her sometimes, still thinks of her with an ache in her chest; it’s comforting to know that apparently Amarice does too.

She wants to let this moment linger, to let her fingers trail idly through Amarice’s hair and let them both take some peace from the moment. She really, _really_ wants to, but in the very same second she thinks of giving in she catches Xena’s eye from the other side of the now-dead fire, and she knows that’s not an option. They have a long day ahead of them, and it won’t get any shorter by lingering here.

“I don’t think so,” she says to Amarice, nudging her head a bit more. “Come on, sleepy-head. Up and at ’em.”

Amarice grumbles incoherently for a bit, then sighs and stretches. “Ugh…”

She comes back to herself pretty quickly after that, sitting up with a jolt and a frown like she can’t quite remember how she came to be where she is. Gabrielle has to smother another fond smile at the sight of her looking around in owlish confusion; she remembers entirely too well the feeling of waking up in Xena’s bedroll the morning after an emotional night, wondering how in the world that happened. She ruffles Amarice’s hair, reassuring her with a laugh and a shake of her head, just like Xena always used to.

“I take it you’re not cold any more?” she asks.

Amarice blinks a little. “Gods, no,” she mumbles, then her face crumples into another frown. “You’re really warm.”

Gabrielle forces a grin. “Sharing body heat has that effect.”

The frown doesn’t go away, though, and Gabrielle doesn’t need to follow the line of Amarice’s gaze to know exactly what changed her mood. She’s still anxious, still thinking about Rome, still so afraid of losing her and Xena again, and of course she’s assuming the worst.

“Not like that, dummy.” The word might be spoken just as lightly as it was last night, but the anxiety cuts a line right through the levity. “I mean you’re _really_ warm. Like…”

She reaches out, moving to touch the wound still seething on Gabrielle’s shoulder. Gabrielle leans back before she can make the contact, though, and it’s not just the promise of pain that makes her flinch away. She doesn’t want to any this again. She doesn’t want to have to deal with the idea that Amarice might be right after all. They’re going to Britannia; they’re going back _there_. They can’t afford for this to become a thing.

“Amarice.” Her voice is high as well, nearly as unsteady as Amarice’s, but years of travelling with Xena have made her better practised in trying to sound stronger than she is. “It’s not a problem, all right? I promised you it would be fine, and it is. You need to… you need to stop seeing gorgons behind every stone.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Amarice whines, drawing herself up to her full height; even seated as they are, she’s still got a good few inches over Gabrielle. “I’m an Amazon, not some stupid kid. I’ve seen stuff like this before.”

“So have I,” Gabrielle counters, a little more hotly than she intended. The warmth and tenderness is long gone now, for both of them. “Don’t you think I’d know if it was getting worse? Don’t you think I’d feel it?”

“Well, sure, but…” She trails off, glancing around the camp to where Xena and Andred are crouched on the other side of the camp, arguing about breakfast or the nearest dockyard or something similarly insubstantial. Amarice watches them for a moment, then lowers her voice to a whisper. “Come on. Xena doesn’t need to know.”

In spite of herself, Gabrielle bristles. “Amarice…”

“I mean it.” She sounds so sincere, like this is nothing to be ashamed of. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. The same way I look at her, right? We’re both sick of being treated like kids.”

“You _are_ a kid,” Gabrielle mutters, more to herself than to Amarice. She knows that’s not true, that Amarice is probably older than she herself was when she first set out with Xena, but it makes her feel a little bit superior to repeat it. “I’m not. I haven’t been in a very long time now. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Sure it’s not.” She doesn’t sound especially convinced, but of course Gabrielle didn’t expect her to. “Whatever. Point is, I know what it feels like. You want her to respect you. You want her to think you’re all tough and strong, like you’re a proper warrior now that you dropped that ‘love your enemy’ stuff. You don’t want her thinking you’re, like, weak or something.”

That strikes home, a lot harder than Gabrielle would care to admit, and much harder than she’ll let Amarice see. She sets her jaw, shakes her head, like she can make the accusation false by resisting it.

“It’s not about being weak.” she insists. Maybe if she repeats it often enough, twists the words hard enough, one of them might actually believe her. “It’s just… Xena has enough on her plate right now, and so do I. We can’t afford to get distracted by this… this fatalistic paranoia of yours. We need to focus on what’s important.”

Amarice looks stung. Gabrielle can’t really blame her for that; she wasn’t there in Britannia with them last time, and she can’t possibly understand how much all of this is affecting Xena and Gabrielle, how deep those hurts still run. Gabrielle hasn’t had the luxury to indulge that kind of ignorance in a very long time, and it strikes her like a punch to the gut, all the quiet little ways that Amarice really is more like her than Xena. Underneath all of those keen warrior’s instincts, she is still so unfathomably innocent.

“This _is_ important,” Amarice says, swallowing back the hurt before it can show through in her eyes. “It’s not paranoia.”

“Amarice…”

“No. You know I’m right about this. You know I’m not just being paranoid or fatal-whatever. I can see it, and so can you. It _is_ getting bad, and you know it as well as I do. You just don’t want to admit it. Don’t want to hurt you precious pride or whatever.” She squares her shoulders, tries to look mature. “Y’know, people always say that I’m the stubborn one, or that Xena is, because we’re the ones who like to kick butt when people like you are talking about their feelings. But really it’s the other way round. Xena and me, we’re just being smart. You’re the one who’s being stubborn and… and _stupid_.”

Gabrielle chuckles. She can’t exactly argue with that, and she’s not really sure she would even if she could. She knows that she’s being unjustifiably harsh about this, and she knows too that Amarice is right to call her on it, right to look at her with that stung, gutted look. Even if she’s not really a kid — which she’s really not, Gabrielle knows that — it’s still not her fault. She can’t be blamed for worrying with the evidence right there in front of her. She definitely can’t be blamed for not understanding things she’s never known.

Besides, she’s right as well when she says that Gabrielle doesn’t want to admit to any of this; she may not understand the real reason why, but she’s right just the same. Gabrielle doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth; she doesn’t want to look down at her shoulder and admit that maybe it’s not healing as well as she thought she was after all. She doesn’t want Amarice to be right; she doesn’t want to be wrong.

It’s not as black-and-white as Amarice thinks, though. Stubbornness and pride and all the rest of it… Gabrielle will be the first to admit that she’s a victim of those things more often than not, but that’s not what it’s about this time.

It’s not about being as strong as Xena, or being a tougher Amazon than Amarice; right now, she just needs to believe that the one thing she did right, she also did well. She has to believe in her own words — _“it’ll heal”_ and _“it’s okay”_ and whatever other convenient lie falls from her tongue — because those are the truths she made for herself. The wound oner shoulder still hurts, but it’s healing. It has to be, because she’s the one who healed it. It’s the one thing she’s done on her own since she and Xena hung from crosses, and she won’t let it be any other way. She won’t let herself fail at this too.

“It’s not as bad as you think it is,” she says out loud, and squeezes Amarice’s hand in a tactful pseudo-apology. “It’s not healing well, I admit that. But it is still healing. It’s—”

“It’s _festering_ ,” Amarice counters, and this time she does touch the wound. Gabrielle sucks in her breath at the pain, but she doesn’t cry out and she doesn’t stop her. “That’s what it’s doing. It’s getting worse and it’s festering and it… it needs someone to treat it.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes. “I can treat it myself,” she says. “Do you at least trust me to do that?”

“No,” Amarice says, with the kind of scowl that would be comical if they were talking about anything else. “No, I think you’re just gonna make it worse again. I think you’re gonna get yourself—”

“Don’t say it.” She doesn’t want to think about that. She can’t afford to think about it; if she does, she’ll break all over again. She forces a smile instead, a flash of bravado for both their sakes. “Amarice, try and be sensible. You can’t die from a wound that’s already closed.”

Amarice’s lower lip is quivering. “I know that,” she mumbles.

She doesn’t, of course, because it’s a lie. They both know that it is, but Amarice is so desperate to believe it, so desperate not to think about Rome and crucifixions and death, so desperate not to think about how to felt to haul her friends’ bodies down from those crosses; Gabrielle can see the memory playing across her face, can feel the anguish and the grief resurfacing inside of her, and it makes her own chest tighten too, in a kind of tired, aching empathy. She doesn’t want to be responsible for those feelings; she’s been through enough of them herself to know what it’s like, and she can’t stand the thought of being the one to drag them out of someone else. Amarice needs to learn more of the world, yes, but not like this. Not because of _her_.

Gabrielle takes her hand again, but she doesn’t squeeze it this time. She just holds it in her own, feels the warrior’s callouses already starting to form on her palms and her fingers. _Old before her time_ , she thinks sadly, and wonders whether it’s because she’s an Amazon or because she chose to travel with her and Xena.

“It’ll be fine,” she promises, as gently as she can. “You don’t need to worry.”

Amarice leans in, hides her face in Gabrielle’s neck for a moment. Gabrielle can feel her eyelashes fluttering against the skin, cold and wet.

“Easy for you to say,” she says. “You weren’t the one left behind.”

*

She’s right, of course: the wound does fester.

Gabrielle treats it as well and as discreetly as she can, with herbs she finds at the side of the road. Xena taught her these little tricks very well, and Gabrielle has always taken more naturally to healing wounds than inflicting them.

She keeps it hidden too, or at least she tries to. It’s not an easy feat, and not just because the damn thing is so painful; her new outfit might be comfortable and easy to fight in, but it doesn’t leave much to the imagination and her shoulders are very much on display.

Honestly, at this point she’s not really sure who she’s more desperate to hide it from: Xena or Amarice. Xena is distracted, and that makes her inattentive; she spends most of her time arguing with Andred about Boadicea and her battle plans, and she doesn’t look at Gabrielle very often at all. That’s a blessing because Gabrielle’s sure that she would notice the injury in a heartbeat, but it’s also a curse because on the rare occasion that she does glance at her, the clouds in her eyes and the strain on her face makes the guilt weigh down all the more heavily. It’s her fault that Xena is distracted, and now she’s taking advantage of it for her own benefit.

As for Amarice… well. She might not have the burden of knowing what sort of a nightmare their destination is, but she’s definitely right when she says that Gabrielle wasn’t the one left behind. Death isn’t nearly so intimidating to Gabrielle now that she’s survived it not just once but twice, but she knows from her own experience that it’s not nearly so simple for Amarice. She will remember this long after Gabrielle has forgotten the pain, and she will take the memory of those Roman crosses to her grave.

Gabrielle doesn’t want either of them to feel that kind of pain, and she definitely doesn’t want them to feel that way about her. She doesn’t want Xena to see any more ghosts of the girl who suffered so brutally in Britannia the last time, and she doesn’t want to give Amarice any more reasons to think of the loss that is still so fresh and so raw in her heart. She won’t be a burden to them. She will not be a burden to anyone else ever again.

They pass through two villages, working through half the day, before they reach the coast and a port town. It’s been a strained few hours for everyone involved, and the sight of the water is a pointed reminder that, for Gabrielle at least, there is far worse still to come. She loves the sea when she’s watching it from a distance, but when she’s standing on it, she often finds it’s quite the opposite.

Xena wanders off on her own, kicking the ground and muttering something about arranging passage and stocking up on supplies. Gabrielle longs to go with her; she doesn’t imagine she’d be much help in bartering with captains or merchants, but she wants an opportunity to talk to Xena before they’re on a ship and she can’t talk at all. She wants to talk about Britannia, and about their mission; she wants to talk about _them_ , but Xena doesn’t even look back when she calls her name.

Amarice, in higher spirits with a tavern in sight, elbows her in the ribs as she watches Xena stalk off. “She’s really mad at you, huh?”

Gabrielle watches Xena’s burly figure disappear into the crowd. Her shoulder throbs, and so does her heart. “She really didn’t want to take this trip,” she says, by way of explanation.

“You can say that again.” Amarice hums thoughtfully, then shrugs. “Well, I’m glad you talked her into it, even if she’s being a baby about it. Lotta blood to have on our consciences if we’d walked away, you know?”

Gabrielle does know, though she wishes she didn’t.

It’s a couple more hours before they find themselves standing on the dock, before Xena’s certain that they have whatever supplies she thinks they’ll need, before she’s arranged passage and paid off the captain and all the rest of it. She does all of those things without ever asking anyone else what they think or feel or want, and though Gabrielle understands why, still it feels like a personal slight. She knows that Xena just needs to feel like she’s in control, to remember that there’s still a part of this journey that is _hers_ , but it’s hard not to take it personally when she breezes past for the fourth time in as many minutes and doesn’t even look at her.

She gestures at one of the moored ships, and makes a point of talking to Andred and not Gabrielle when she says, “There she is.”

“That thing?” Amarice, never one to be ignored, quirks a brow. “Not much to look at, is it?”

“Maybe not,” Xena shoots back, eyes on the ship. “But she’ll get the job done well enough.”

“She?” Amarice echoes, still dubious. “You know this floating junk-heap personally, then? Like, on first-name terms?”

“Oh, sure.” Xena’s smile is grim, a shadow of her usual one, but at least it’s something. Amarice has a talent for that, bringing out the humour in everyone around her. In Xena, specifically, it’s a welcome shift. “She and I go way back. The best of friends.”

Gabrielle snorts her amusement, and stares up at the rippling sails.

The ship is pretty small, and not exactly sturdy. Even tethered as it is to the shore, it’s rocking a little, bobbing on the water like something much more fragile than it is. The wood is old, worn and eroded in places but clean and at least mostly solid; they’ve been on far more dangerous vessels than this, Gabrielle knows, but still the sight of it is enough to make her stomach churn a little, to prick the back of her neck with a familiar cold sweat. It’s a long voyage to Britannia, experience has taught her, and it doesn’t bode well at all that she’s feeling ill before they even set sail.

Apparently sensing her discomfort, Xena drops a hand onto her uninjured shoulder. “You all right?”

The question is loaded, quite obviously so. There’s an odd look on her face as she asks it, close to a frown but carefully suppressed, like she’s trying very hard to be sympathetic but can’t quite quell her own impatience. It makes Gabrielle feel stupid, fills her with a kind of impotent frustration, and that makes her want to lie.

It’s been a very long time since they were quite so out of sync as this, since she couldn’t tell with just a glance exactly what Xena was thinking, what she wants from her. She feels strangely distanced, far away; more than that, though, she wants to reach out, to bury her face in Xena’s shoulder, to hold Xena like Xena refused to hold her last night. She drives down all of those feelings, though, and focuses instead on the hand on her arm, the question she asked, and the fact that, at least in theory, it means that she cares.

“Boats,” she mutters, like the word is an answer in itself. “You know how I feel about boats.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go,” Xena reminds her. It’s not exactly cruel, the way she says it, but it’s definitely not kind. It makes Gabrielle feel anxious, uncomfortable in a way that runs deeper than the physical. “I wanted to stay here on dry land, remember?”

Gabrielle forces a smile, more for her own sake than for Xena’s. If she can keep her face under control, maybe she’ll be able to do the same for her body.

“You know me,” she grits out. “Always picking the path less travelled.”

“Uh huh.” Xena leans in to kiss her; the contact is hollow, lacking her usual warmth, and it’s more telling than either of them will ever admit that she finds her cheek and not her mouth. Gabrielle feels exposed under the contact, vulnerable in a way that Xena’s kisses have never made her feel before. “Well, I hope it’s worth it. I hear tell the seas are going to be rough.”

“Very funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.” She pulls away, and the odd look on her face tightens into something new, something that Gabrielle does recognise, a kind of violent compassion that Xena has only ever turned on her once before. It’s not a pleasant memory. “We’ve got a good half-hour or so before we’re due to set sail. Plenty of time left to change your mind.”

Gabrielle shakes her head, shrugs her shoulder free. “Xena…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. ‘It’s the right thing to do’.” Xena sighs. “Just once, Gabrielle, I wish your ‘right thing’ wasn’t so damn painful.”

“I know,” Gabrielle whispers, barely audible. “I do too.”

*

It’s a cargo ship, not meant for passengers.

Not that it matters, really, so long as the thing holds itself together. They’ve all been in far worse places, more cramped and more damp and more unpleasant in every way, and Gabrielle has never known Xena to complain about the accommodations in her life. If she’s content, then Gabrielle will be as well, or as close to it as she can get when the floor is moving underfoot and her stomach is moving inside her.

Xena and Andred pace the deck while the ship’s still docked, examining in rigorous detail every little nook and cranny they can find. Gabrielle has no idea what they’re searching for, but she wouldn’t be surprised to hear the words ‘stowaway Romans’ fall from one of their mouths; Xena is nothing if not obsessive, and Andred seems to be a like-minded companion in that.

Amarice, meanwhile, spends the half-hour before they cast off staring slack-jawed at everything and running around like a puppy with its tongue hanging out. Her face is a portrait, somewhere between awe and disbelief; she’s never been on a ship before and it’s all very new and exciting. It’s nice to see her beaming for a change, to watch as she all but forgets her own conflicted feelings and just relishes the thrill of a new adventure; it makes Gabrielle think of herself all over again, of the days when she was so easily enthralled.

Today, she is definitely not enthralled. She doesn’t even bother to look around the place, to see what their accommodations are going to be like for the duration of the voyage. Experience has taught her that it won’t make the least difference once they’re out on open water. A cargo hauler or an Egyptian barge, it’s all the same when her head is hanging over the side.

They set sail with pinpoint punctuality, deckhands and sailors swarming the deck as they navigate their way out from the shallows, and for a blessed while the hustle and bustle of activity is enough of a distraction that the movement of the boat becomes little more than a background annoyance.

Gabrielle watches. She watches the deckhands, the sailors, the work they’re doing. She watches Xena and Andred as they pick out a quiet little corner to talk about their destination and the conflicts that await them there. She watches Amarice as she bounces from one side of the ship to the other, and wryly wonders if she’ll still be this cheerful when the waves start to swell. She watches everything and everyone, anything she can find to keep herself from thinking about where they are and where they’re going.

Hard as she tries, though, she can’t stave it off forever. She knows it, but that doesn’t stop her trying.

It’s a couple of hours later when it finally hits, just as the last shadow of land disappears from the horizon, leaving them with nothing but open water as far as the eye can see in every direction. All of a sudden the boat feels very, very small, the ocean feels very, very big, and Gabrielle can feel _everything_.

She finds a crate to sit down on, in a quiet out-of-the-way corner of the main deck. It’s a damp and dirty thing, not comfortable at all, but it’s within easy stumbling distance of the rail and right now that’s all she cares about.

With more effort than she’d care to admit, she works the little metal wristguards off her arms. They’re part of her new outfit, designed to help her fight more effectively; the added protection is reason enough to keep them on, but they also help to keep her wrists straight when she works with the sai; it’s a skill she’s still working on, still trying to perfect, and the guards make a real difference. They’re very useful on dry land, when she’s surrounded by bandits or thieves or warlords, but here in the middle of the ocean they’re in the way. She doesn’t care right now if her wrists are straight or protected or anything else; she just wants to touch them.

They clatter to the deck once she’s wrested them off, and she doesn’t even bother to pick them up or nudge them out of the way. No time for that; she jabs two fingers into the familiar pressure point, and holds fast.

Xena taught her this trick a few years ago. It was a point of necessity at the time; they assumed they’d be stuck forever on a cursed ship, and neither of them particularly relished a lifetime of the alternative. It doesn’t work quite so well when Gabrielle tries it on herself as it does when Xena’s doing it, but even under her own hand it’s usually enough to get her through a rough voyage without wanting to die. It worked back then, when she needed it most; is it so much to ask for the same again now?

She thinks back on that day with a kind of fondness, remembers the sad look on Xena’s face when she crouched in front of her and showed her what to do. It feels like a hundred lifetimes ago now, back when she was young and naïve, and green in more ways than just this one.

She’s not young any more, and she’s definitely not naïve, but she is still so terribly green. It’s been a long time since she was last at sea, and she’d all but forgotten how torturous seasickness can be, how inescapable the suffering when the nausea grips her like this, when the waves rise and the acid does too.

Jabbing at the pressure points doesn’t help this time. She squeezes her wrist hard enough to bruise, eyes clamped shut and breathing shallow, waiting urgently for the moment when it starts to fade, but it never comes. Keeping her eyes closed makes it worse too; it sharpens the sensation, makes everything feel so much more present, so much more powerful. She’s acutely aware of the motion all around her, the deck pitching and yawing and creaking, the waves rolling and bouncing and heaving, the sheer relentlessness of it, endless and ceaseless and—

She groans, drags herself to the rail, and launches her lunch over it.

She stays there even after she’s done retching, holding her head over the side of the ship and silently wishing she would just die again. She’s not finished, she knows, and she won’t be until they’re back on solid ground. Some people never manage to find their sea legs, Xena told her the first time they sailed together. Gabrielle remembers that voyage too, rather too well with the benefit of hindsight. It was fraught with trouble, sirens and sea gods and charming Ithican kings, and she’s never quite forgiven Xena for being too preoccupied to show her the pressure points then. She prays that this journey won’t take the same turns as that one did; the last thing anyone on this boat needs is a cranky Poseidon.

It’s maybe twenty minutes later, just as her stomach starts to ready itself for another round, when she feels a hand on the back of her neck, warm breath and a familiar voice close to her ear.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Gabrielle groans again. “Xena.”

Xena’s fingers dig into the flesh at the base of her neck, familiar callouses massaging out a bit of the tightness there. “Pressure points, Gabrielle.”

“Didn’t work.” Gabrielle forces down another spasm. She feels so very sick. “Don’t you think that was the first thing I tried?”

She takes a deep breath, struggles against the urge to swallow; she’s learned many times by now that it only ever makes things worse. She holds herself still for a moment or two, then slowly — achingly slowly, just to be safe — lifts her head to find Xena’s eyes.

It surprises her, the depth of emotion she finds there; after being met with nothing but resistance for the best part of a day, it’s almost as much of a shock to her system as the rolling of the deck beneath her feet, albeit rather more welcome.

Xena winces a little at the sight of her, and her fingers become soft at her neck. “Oh, Gabrielle…”

Still moving very carefully, Gabrielle turns her body around. She doesn’t pull free from Xena’s hand, but she doesn’t lean into the contact like she normally would either. She eases herself down to the deck, sitting with her knees spread and her back braced against the side of the ship; it takes more effort than she’d care to admit to keep her breathing slow and even, not to let her chest give in to a different kind of spasm.

“Stupid idea, huh?” she asks, not really talking to Xena. “Going to Britannia, getting on a ship… all of it.” Xena chuckles, and Gabrielle looks up at her again, mustering a sullen scowl. “You just came over here to say ‘I told you so’, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, you got me,” Xena deadpans. She sits down too, leans her body against Gabrielle’s, and kisses her temples; it’s just a moment, the barest brush, but the contact is so sweet, so tender that it makes her want to weep. “Pretty bad this time, huh?”

“It’s…” Gabrielle sighs. There’s no sense in denying it, she supposes; the truth is written all over her miserable face. “Yeah. It’s pretty bad.”

Xena winces again, shaking her head like she’s been expecting this, like she knew all along that the voyage would be almost as much of a nightmare as the island itself. “And the pressure points definitely aren’t working? You’re not just doing it wrong?”

She’s goading her, Gabrielle can tell, but she’s too wretched to even try and resist. “I think I know how to do it by now,” she huffs.

“Of course you do.”

“Xena.” She can taste acid in the back of her mouth, and it sends another jolt lancing through her stomach. She’s going to be sick again, she can feel it. It’s just a question of whether she can drag herself through this conversation first. “Could it be because we were, you know, _dead_? You think that could have… I don’t know, dulled the nerves or something?”

Xena clearly doesn’t think so, but she humours her anyway, no doubt because she doesn’t want to make her any more miserable than she already is.

“Maybe,” she says without conviction, then changes tack with all the subtlety of a raging minotaur. “You’re kind of feverish. You sure you’re not—”

“It’s nothing.” Gabrielle covers her shoulder with her elbow, hiding the wound, and makes a show of rubbing her neck as though that was her intention all along. She has no doubt that Xena will see through the facade in a heartbeat — she’s the most perceptive woman Gabrielle has ever met, and she knows her too well to be fooled by this — but still she has to try. “You’d be feverish too, if you’d just lost a week’s worth of meals in the space of five minutes.”

Xena rolls her eyes. “That’s—”

“Xena, _don’t_.”

Her voice is so shaky, and she can’t allow that. It doesn’t matter that it’s understandable given the circumstances; all that matters is that Xena will hear what she want to hear, that she’ll recognise the weakness in the tremors, and think, _she’s still that girl_. Gabrielle can’t let that happen. She doesn’t care how sick she is, how badly her wound festers, how horrible the voyage is or how much she suffers. She won’t let Xena see the version of her who came to Britannia the last time.

If Xena sees her like that, even just for a moment, then that’s what she’ll be. The last two years, everything she’s learned and done and become will disappear like it never existed at all, and the only thing left will be a broken, shattered shell. She won’t let that happen, won’t let Xena see her that way, won’t let her _make her_ that way. She can’t become that girl again. She can’t.

Xena sighs. “Gabrielle.”

“Don’t,” she says again, urgent this time. “It’s really not a big deal, Xena, all right? The gods know, I’ve been through this before.”

She’s not talking about seasickness, and they both know it.

Xena’s expression hardens to steel; she’s definitely not coddling her now. “That’s no reason to put yourself through it again.”

“Yes it is. When the good outweighs the bad, it _is_.”

She wants so badly to make Xena understand that, to make her see that this is about more than just the two of them and whatever hurts they’ve been through. It’s never been as easy for Xena as it is for Gabrielle to understand just how much the greater good is worth, and just how little they are by comparison. Xena thrives on results, on things she can see, and it’s very difficult for her to hold out for some abstract concept to keep her faith.

“I don’t care how much ‘the good’ weighs,” she says, the words as painful as they are predictable. “I care about _you_.”

“Xena, people’s lives are at stake.” Her voice cracks. “Surely you of all people understand that I’m not more important than them. After Caesar…”

“…after Caesar, I hung from a cross with my spine broken, watching the life bleed out of you.” Xena shakes her head; Gabrielle can see that the memory still tortures her. “After Caesar, I watched you die, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. After Caesar, I died with you and lost you and went through Hell to get you back. If Caesar has taught me anything, Gabrielle, it’s that your life _is_ worth more.”

“But it’s not my life that’s in danger.” Gabrielle swallows, feels the nausea sharpen again. “My stomach, maybe, but not my life.”

Xena sighs. Apparently she can see that Gabrielle is starting to feel queasy again, because without prompting her hand drifts down to rub her back, pressing in smooth, slow circles across the skin. Despite herself, Gabrielle accepts the gesture, and the comfort that it brings; she lets her head drop down onto Xena’s shoulder, lets her eyelids flutter and her breathing come slower until the churning abates a little. She still feels terrible, but Xena’s hands have always made her feel better, and this time is no different. Even now, her presence calms every part of her.

She wants to believe that things will be as simple as this in Britannia. A moment’s contact and a few fleeting kisses, and all the horrors of the last time will bleed away for them both. She wants to believe that she has grown and matured, that she has evolved so much that a moment’s comfort will be enough to end this; she wants to believe that she’s put the past and the pain so far behind her that it won’t destroy her this time like it almost did back then. She wants to, but she knows herself to well to deny who she is, and that pain has been washing over her in ocean-deep waves ever since she first whispered the name.

 _Britannia_. She still has nightmares about it sometimes. Meridian’s smile, and Khrafstar’s too, hers at peace as she took her last breath and his twisting from peace and tranquillity to hunger and violence and bloodlust.

Worse than either of those things, though, are the nightmares she has about the fire that came after. Those dreams don’t come very often any more, but they always shatter her when they do. The flames are so hot and she’s so high, so horrified, so helpless; even in her dreams they wrap themselves around her, and just like that she’s right back there, living through it all over again as if she never left. It’s just as endless as the water is now, the vertigo of being held suspended over the altar, the horror, the heat, the height and, above all that, the endless, excruciating _pain_ —

She lurches up to her feet, and throws herself back over the rail.

Xena rises too, keeping her hand at her back. “Easy, Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle waits for the spasms to pass. She grips the rail with one hand, white-knuckled and shuddering, and wipes at her mouth with the other.

“Easy for you, maybe,” she grumbles.

Xena’s hand gets very, very still. She holds it there for a few more moments, then pulls away completely. When Gabrielle finds the strength and the self-control to look back up, she finds Xena staring at her with a dark expression on her face. It’s not quite anger, but it’s something very close; it’s intimidating, almost frightening, and it leaves her breathless.

“Nothing about this is easy for me,” Xena says, deathly quiet.

Gabrielle closes her eyes, leans forward until her forehead touches the rail. “I know that,” she sighs. “That’s not what I meant.” She swallows a couple of times, convulsive and acid-tasting and horrible. “Xena, I—”

But that’s as far as her stomach lets her get, and by the time she stops heaving long enough to lift her head again, Xena is gone.

*

The rest of the day passes in pretty much the same way.

Gabrielle spends half her time hanging over the side of the ship, and the other half leaning against it and squinting at the horizon. Unable to depend like she usually does on Xena’s pressure points, she settles instead for trying to find some fixed point to focus on, the distant line where the sky touches the sea. It doesn’t help to ease the cramping in her stomach, but the never-ending stretch of water eases some of the strain in her chest, the dread that twists into a very different kind of nausea.

She knows better than to expect that she’ll feel any better for as long as she’s stuck on the water, but by the time the sun starts to go down she’s at least steady enough to take a few steps away from the rail and onto the main deck. Her legs wobble under her, muscles weak and screaming from the hours of unwanted exertion, and her stomach is clenching around the nothing left inside it. She feels almost worse than she did when she was dead, but still she holds herself upright, clinging like a child to her faltering dignity; weak though she is, she doesn’t lose her footing and she doesn’t paint the deck. It’s not much of a win, but it’s enough of one for now.

Blessedly, the deck is mostly clear by now. A few sailors mill about here and there, manning the sails or the wheel or the rigging, but most of the crew are below deck, no doubt settling down for the evening’s meal. Food is about the last thing Gabrielle wants to think about right now, and so she pushes the thought out of her mind. Better to make use of the empty space, she thinks, and pulls her sai out of her boots.

It isn’t exactly her best idea, practicing while she’s queasy, but it’s more cathartic than she expects. Moving too much exacerbates the nausea, sends her bolting back to the rail on more than one occasion, but it feels like less of a failure with a good reason behind it. It’s not that she has a weak constitution this time, it’s that she’s trying to over-work herself, making too much of an effort to do something beyond her power. It makes her feel more in control of her body and its reactions, knowing that when it happens it’s because she was pushing herself too hard. If she’s going to spend the rest of the voyage feeling like this anyway, it might as well be by her own hand.

She’s taking a short break, breathing hard with the sai hanging loose in her hands, when a too-chipper voice calls out to her from the other side of the deck.

“Isn’t this _great_?”

Gabrielle groans and closes her eyes. “Not from where I’m standing,” she mutters.

“Hey, now, lighten up.” Amarice’s footsteps are feline-light as she darts over to her side, but there’s nothing light at all in the way she claps Gabrielle on the back. It’s hard to say which is more unpleasant, the stab of nausea in her stomach or the jolt of pain through her shoulder. “Where’s your sense of adventure? This sailing stuff is—”

“— _great_.” Gabrielle opens her eyes, lets her vision focus on Amarice’s oversized smile. “Uh huh. Let’s just say it’s not really my thing.”

Amarice studies her for a moment, like she’s trying to figure out whether she’s joking or not. It’s typical of her, really; she’s always so quick to judge anyone who thinks differently, anyone who has a slightly different world experience or point of view. Sometimes Gabrielle wants to shake her for the way she looks at her, but right now she doesn’t have the strength.

She doesn’t have the strength to do much of anything, honestly, so she just sighs and sits herself down on the nearest relatively clean spot of deck. Amarice watches her move, eyes widening in a way that’s almost comical as her brain catches up with her eyes and realises that no, she is definitely _not_ joking.

“Oh,” she says after a long, uncomfortable moment. The smile is gone now, thank the gods. “Oh, wow, you look awful.”

“Thanks.” Gabrielle grips the sai tighter, squeezing the curved edges against her palms. It keeps her stomach under control, yes, but more importantly it helps her to hold her temper in check. “You really know how to flatter a girl.”

“I didn’t know you were the kind of girl who needed flattering.”

She’s blinking a little as she says it, lips twitching like she’s not sure whether to frown or smirk. She gets that look quite often, usually when she’s confused, and almost always when she’s talking to Gabrielle. It’s like they’re speaking foreign tongues, always missing each other somehow, and Gabrielle knows that it shouldn’t warm her heart the way it does to see that look on her face just now. She can’t hide the fondness that floods through her, or the smile that follows; the warmth is such a welcome relief from all that churning.

“We all have our moments,” she says. “But that’s not the point. Who taught you that _‘you look awful’_ makes for a good greeting?”

Amarice rolls her eyes. “Someone less uptight than you,” she quips, but she’s more relaxed now and her twitching lips seem to have settled on smirking.

Gabrielle chuckles again, a little weaker than before, and turns the sai over in her hands a couple of times. She’s getting a little better at flipping them around, turning them out and in with the flow of battle, twisting them in whichever direction she needs for a block or a blow, but she’s still very much an amateur and she is very aware of that.

It’s not that she’s used to being an expert or anything. The gods know, she never truly mastered the staff either. With that, though, she at least had some measure of training.

Her heart aches a little at the thought, looking at Amarice now and once again remembering Ephiny. The two of them clashed too in those early days, Gabrielle so idealistic and foolish and Ephiny so resentful and bitter, hating the silly village upstart who claimed her friend’s right of caste without even knowing how great a gift it was.

She became a close and cherished friend, perhaps the closest Gabrielle has beyond Xena and Joxer — and, now, Amarice — but those early lessons still linger. Gabrielle still blushes to think of how green she was back then, how much a child with a new plaything, and how she refused to admit even in the face of it that she was completely out of her depth.

The sai are very different. Gabrielle picked out the staff for herself; she picked out the sai for Xena. A confused, chakramless Xena, but Xena nonetheless. It was only by sheer coincidence that Gabrielle was the one who ended up making use of them in the brawl that followed.

In a way, she supposes she should thank Xena for that, but in another she wishes she didn’t have to. A weapon that can stun or kill, disarm or dismember depending on which way it’s turned is a far cry from the defensive art of the staff, and it’s been more of a challenge than Gabrielle will admit to adjust to that.

She has become a new person. The idealistic little girl who left Poteidaia and picked up an Amazon staff is long gone now, and the peaceful young woman who followed Eli down the path of love died nailed to a Roman cross. The woman who came back from the dead is different from both of them; she wields a pair of sai like she’s been doing it all her life, and she doesn’t hesitate to use the sharp end when she has to. She gets so angry when she’s fighting now; a moment of panic leaves her so far out of control, so far outside her comfort zone. It might worry her a little, if experience hadn’t already taught her that that moment is the difference between living and dying.

Thinking about it makes her feel uneasy; the sensation wraps itself around the nausea rippling inside of her, and she shoves the sai back into her boots before she loses her grip on one or the other.

“Did you want something, Amarice?” she asks, and hopes her voice doesn’t sound too acid-thick.

Amarice blinks, as though she’s all but forgotten that she was the one who approached Gabrielle. “Nah,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Just saw you practicing and figured I’d come and say ‘hey’.” Her eyes are on Gabrielle’s boots, though, and she looks shy. “How’s your shoulder?”

Gabrielle sighs. The wound speaks for itself, just as it has from the moment she first got it. It’s throbbing and angry, a shade of red that definitely isn’t natural and a heat that nearly makes her feel worse than the seasickness. She knows Amarice pretty well by now, and she knows that she can already see the answer to her question; she’s been stealing less than subtle glances at it all day long, like it’s the embodiment of all her worst fears, and she can’t possibly have missed the way it’s searing the skin. She’s not asking because she wants to hear the answer; she’s asking because she wants to see if Gabrielle will give her an honest one.

Naturally then, Gabrielle gives no answer at all. “Didn’t we already talk about this?” she asks.

Amarice shakes her head. _Two can play that game,_ she says without words, and ignores Gabrielle’s question in turn.

“No herbs on a ship,” she presses. “Probably no healer, either. What’ll happen if you get sick?”

Gabrielle groans at her choice of words. Her stomach doesn’t appreciate the reminder. “I’m already sick,” she says. “You don’t need to—”

“Pfft.” It’s an interruption as much as a denial. “Seasickness doesn’t count. That only happens to losers who—”

“ _Amarice_.”

“Oh.” She flushes furiously. “Right. Uh. I didn’t mean… that is…” She throws up her hands, as much of an apology as she’s ever managed. “I’m putting my foot in my mouth a lot today, aren’t I?”

“Not just today,” Gabrielle points out, then softens a little. “It’s all right. I was the same way when I first started travelling with Xena. You should have heard some of the things I used to do and say.”

Amarice’s eyes light up for a moment, but it’s entirely too brief. Gabrielle is trying to distract her, to give her ready-made quips just waiting for an outlet, but Amarice isn’t rising to the bait at all. She shakes her head, and the light dies in her eyes.

“C’mon, Gab,” she says.

Gabrielle rolls her eyes; she doesn’t approve of the abbreviation. “Don’t.”

“I’m serious.” That much is obvious; she doesn’t need to say it. “We gotta talk about that shoulder thing.”

“You let me worry about that shoulder thing,” Gabrielle says.

Amarice’s jaw goes white, and she shakes her head again. “Nuh uh,” she says; it might come out a little more authoritatively if her lips weren’t trembling as she says it. “Nuh uh, no way. You can’t… you’re not Xena. You don’t get to be all big bad stoic warrior princess, or pretend like you’re tougher than you are. Not with me.”

“Not with you?” Gabrielle echoes, raising a brow.

“Yeah, you heard me. You and me, we’re the same. Only difference is that I knew how to pick up a sword and use it back when you were still tripping over your feet and looking like an idiot. So you don’t… you don’t get to keep ducking and dodging and all that stuff. Not with me. You don’t get to act like you’re all superior and smart and stuff, like we’re so far apart, just because Xena bedded you first.”

Gabrielle laughs. She can’t help herself. “I’m sorry,” she manages. “Did you say ‘first’?”

“You know what I mean,” Amarice says, blushing and pouting. “Gabrielle, neither one of us is Xena. Not me, and not you. So when you’re doing this stoic self-righteous thing, trying to be all tough and whatever, it’s just…” She wrings her hands, clearly annoyed at herself for not being able to give voice to her feelings. “Look, I don’t know whether you’re trying to impress me or prove yourself or what, but I gotta tell you, you don’t need to worry about doing either.”

“I know that.” Gabrielle is bristling again, more than she expected. It’s not like her to let Amarice get under her skin like this. She knows the differences between them, and the similarities as well. “It’s neither of those things, Amarice. I’m long past the point of proving myself, to you or to Xena or to anyone else. And I know that I don’t impress you. I never have and I probably never will. So that’s really not—”

“Yeah, you have.”

She’s mumbling, so quiet and so much like a confession that it steals Gabrielle’s breath for a moment. She’s never heard anything like that from Amarice before, and honestly she’s always just assumed that she never would. They’re too much opposed in their opinions, too different in their morality.

Gabrielle doesn’t really mind; back when she was following Eli’s path it felt like an opportunity to enlighten a misguided soul, and now that she’s back on the warrior’s path the disrespect feels like a kind of challenge. Neither of those things are really bad, at least not so far as she was concerned, but the thought that she might one day impress her never even entered her mind. To use a fitting metaphor, she naturally assumed that ship had long sailed.

Apparently not, and she doesn’t even realise that the surprise is written all over her face until she hears her own voice blurt out, “What?”

Amarice snorts a derisive laugh. “Oh, come on. You and those things…” She gestures at Gabrielle’s boots, at the sai tucked away. “You couldn’t have had those things in your hands for more than… what, a minute? And there you were, hacking and slashing those bad guys all over the place like you’d been doing it your whole life. Like, what the heck _was_ that?”

Gabrielle winces, not sure whether to be flattered or embarrassed by all of this. She didn’t really think about it at the time, just acted on instinct as a point of necessity. Xena was in no condition to take over the fighting like she usually did, lost as she was inside herself with no memory of her violent past, and so Gabrielle didn’t really have much choice in the matter. She had no weapons of her own, hadn’t had any since India, and the sai she’d picked out for Xena were just _there_. What else could she have done in a situation like that?

“It was nothing,” she mumbles, awkward. “Guess you could call it instinct.”

“Some instinct.” Amarice has a very strange look on her face. Gabrielle has seen it before; Joxer wears it all the time, and she’s caught a flicker of it on Xena’s face a couple of times too, but it’s rare to see it on someone as naturally unaffectionate as Amarice. “I don’t know what happened to you in Hell or Tartarus or wherever you and Xena went, but you came back different. I mean, not like Xena did, all lost and confused and stuff, but like… stronger. _More_.”

“More than what?” Gabrielle asks softly. The discomfort sours her stomach again; she’s not entirely sure she wants to know.

“I dunno. More than you were, I guess? More than… more than Xena was, maybe? I mean, not now, obviously, but at the time. You know, she came back all weird. But _you_ …” She blushes again, and looks away. “Yeah. You impressed me.”

Gabrielle’s mouth is suddenly very, very dry. She could blame the seasickness for that — she hasn’t had anything to drink in hours now, and given the afternoon she’s had she’s probably more than a little dehydrated — but she knows that has nothing to do with it. She’d thought she was past the point of needing approval, or even really wanting it from anyone other than Xena, but here she is, blushing just as red as Amarice, transformed into a giddy child at the thought that someone out there — someone other than Ares, at least — has seen her in the way that Xena still can’t.

Xena loves her. Gabrielle has never doubted that for a moment, even before their relationship took its physical turn. But maybe she loves her a little too much; she’s always holding on to some perfect vision of the Gabrielle she thinks she knows, to the idealised version of her that she fell in love with. It’s been years now, a long time by anyone’s standards; Xena might not have changed much, might have all of her growth and experience behind her, but Gabrielle had hers spread out in front of her when they met, and she has changed so much since then. Xena doesn’t see those changes, or maybe she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t see the ways Gabrielle has tried to grow and improve herself; she doesn’t see the parts of her that ache to be _more_. 

Gabrielle never thought it would mean so much to find someone else who does.

Almost without thinking, she reaches for her sai again, safely sheathed in her boots. She brushes the pommels with her thumbs, traces the handles with her fingertips.

Amarice is watching her with awe on her face, tongue flicking out over her lips like maybe her mouth is as dry as Gabrielle’s. Gabrielle closes her eyes for a moment, feels the movement of the boat rippling through her empty stomach, and steels herself against it. It’s easier to drive down the urge to vomit when she knows that Amarice is standing there, when she knows that she’s looking at her with new eyes.

Bile rises into her mouth, but she doesn’t run to the rail this time. She swallows once or twice, wipes her mouth, and squeezes the handles of the sai.

“I could teach you,” she says. It comes out very quietly, voice rough with nausea but steady and very sincere. “When we’re back on dry land.”

What she means, of course, is _‘when I’m feeling better,’_ but if Amarice recognises that she’s smart enough not to mention it out loud. “Really?” she squeaks.

“Sure.” Gabrielle smiles. It comes more easily this time. “I mean, if you want me to.”

All of a sudden, Amarice’s eyes are very big. They catch the light from the setting sun, reflect it until it’s almost blinding, the colours so much brighter in her than on the white-capped water.

“Yeah,” she whispers, breathless and beautiful. “Yeah, I want that.”

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

Xena’s information about the sea was unfortunately and unpleasantly accurate.

The waves get choppy, then rough, then flat-out violent, and Gabrielle spends most of the night wishing that they would to just toss her overboard and be done with it. She crawls down below deck after the third or fourth time a wave soaks her to the bone, and curls up under a ragged, moth-eaten blanket in some dank little corner of the cargo hold. It’s a miserable, brutal horror of a night, and by the time the weather finally breaks — around mid-morning — she’s lost count of how many times she wished she was still hanging from Caesar’s cross.

She limps back up onto the main deck once the sea has settled enough that she can stand; it’s still not calm, but it’s closer than it has been in a good few hours, and she wobbles a little when she tries to walk. She keeps one hand on her stomach and braces the other against whatever solid surface she can reach. The sun is weak when she gets back up, but its light bounces like a beam off the dark water and almost blinds her. Still, it’s worth it; the fresh air helps her to feel almost human again. She stands there for a while, just trying to breathe, then crosses over to the rail and tries to watch the dipping horizon.

She can’t have been there more than ten minutes when Amarice shows up. She’s just as cheerful now as she was yesterday evening; apparently the rough night has done little to strip her of that infuriating sailor-esque enthusiasm. Gabrielle doesn’t know whether to envy her for that or be glad that at least one of them is free from this gods-forsaken curse. She settles for a bit of both, and bites back a groan before she turns to look at her.

“Morning.”

“Hey!” She’s holding a bowl of something that looks revolting and smells worse, and when she shoves it into Gabrielle’s hands it’s all she can do to keep from giving in to the nausea all over again. “I brought you breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Gabrielle echoes; the word alone is enough to make her heave a little.

“Yeah.” Amarice either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Gabrielle only wishes that she was surprised. “I mean, sure, you’ll probably just end up chucking it back into the sea or whatever…”

“Oh, by the gods…” Gabrielle buries her face in her hands, struggles desperately to breathe through her nose. “Do you have to say things like that?”

“Gross, right?” She sticks out her tongue, still maddeningly oblivious to Gabrielle’s rising gorge. “But hey, you’ve gotta keep your strength up. If you’re gonna be training me, I mean.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes. This time, she doesn’t bother trying to stifle the groan. “I said ‘when we’re back on dry land’.”

“Yeah, I know.” It doesn’t seem to be stopping her, though. “But I figured, hey, might as well, right? Start like you mean to carry on or something.” She grins, devastatingly optimistic. “Besides, it’s not like there’s anything else to do on this rig, is there? And it might take your mind off that shoulder thing. Or the stomach thing…” She frowns a little, then shrugs it off like it’s all the same. “One or the other, anyhow. So c’mon. Eat up, and let’s get going.”

Gabrielle sighs. “Amarice…”

But how does she explain all those things she doesn’t really want to admit? Amarice isn’t like Xena, and Gabrielle knows that she has nothing to prove to a young woman who is so much like herself, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, any less stupid, to look up at her and admit she doesn’t have the strength for this. She is so sick and in so much pain, so much a slave on every level to her body’s demands, and Amarice is the first person — the first person whose opinion she cares about, anyway — who has ever looked at her and said _‘you impress me’_. How is she supposed to shatter that now? How is she supposed to look her in the eye, shake her head, and say _‘I am too weak to do this right now’_?

She can’t. She should, she knows, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She won’t destroy something so fragile, something that means more to her than she ever realised.

Swallowing hard, she ventures a glance down into the bowl. It’s not really food by any meaningful definition of the word; it looks like a kind of gruel, thick and foul-smelling, and Gabrielle doesn’t need to try it to know that she’ll never be able to get it down. She’s managed a little water here and there, enough to keep her from dehydrating too badly as the night’s violence took its toll, but she knows that she stands no chance with something like this.

With a tired, miserable sigh, she hands it back to Amarice, and looks away before she can see her face fall.

“Hey, come on.” Amarice’s voice is a petulant whine. “I know it doesn’t taste good, but we’re not exactly spoiled for choice out here, you know? Not much live game out here in the middle of the freaking ocean.”

“I know that.” Already, her throat is spasming, trying to swallow. “That’s not the point.”

“So what then?” Amarice sets the bowl down on the rail, turns Gabrielle’s face until their eyes meet again. Hers are as bright as they were yesterday evening, but it’s a different kind of brightness now, like someone watching a star fall from far away. “You gotta eat something, Gab. Can’t train on an empty stomach.”

“My stomach is going to be empty whether I eat or not,” Gabrielle tells her. “That’s kind of how the seasickness thing works.”

“Oh.” Amarice turns again, gazes out at the waves. “That’s gotta suck.”

“Yeah.” It hurts when her stomach seethes now, a tender, bruised sort of feeling as it clenches around nothing, but she masks the discomfort with a wince and a sigh. “Yeah, it does.”

They watch the horizon together, Amarice looking thoughtful and Gabrielle struggling to get herself under control. There’s nothing but water as far as the eye can see, and that makes her feel better and worse at the same time; there’s no relief in sight, not for days yet, but still she can’t help feeling a little of the tension subsiding inside of her to know that they’re still a long way from their destination.

A fresh kind of sickness surges up in her when she catches herself thinking about Britannia, when she lets herself picture the world and the memories waiting for her out there. It’s different but it’s every bit as potent and in its own way every bit as physical; there are moments when her head is hanging over the side, when she’s retching and her vision is blurred with tears, that she can’t help wondering whether it really is the movement of the boat that’s causing it after all.

Amarice must notice the way she’s getting distant, because she touches her arm and says “Hey,” in a low, reverent whisper.

Gabrielle takes a cleansing, steadying breath, then turns to look at her. “Come on, then,” she says, because Amarice was right when she said it would take her mind off the more unpleasant things. “But don’t expect me to go easy on you.”

“Pfft. You can’t even stand up straight.” She’s trying to smirk, but there’s an edge to it now that wasn’t there a moment ago, like she’s realising this isn’t the brilliant idea she thought it was. “You… uh… you sure you’re up for it? I mean, if you’re not gonna eat? You sure it’s a good idea?”

“Less worrying.” Gabrielle crosses to the centre of deck, slow but with strength in her legs. “More weapons.”

She draws her sai, forcing a wry grin. It’s mostly for Amarice’s sake, of course, to smooth over those sad edges and make her smile bright again, but it’s for her own sake as well. She has to remind herself that she is strong, that she is capable, that she can take care of herself and anyone else who needs her protection, that she is good enough to see this through, that she won’t fail again. She has to remind her ailing body that it doesn’t own her, that nothing does and nothing ever will.

 _Never again_ , she thinks, and drops the sai in her rush to get back to the rail.

*

Amarice is right: it’s not a good idea.

Gabrielle knows that, of course, but she has too much to prove to back down now. Amarice almost certainly realises it as well, if her sudden reticence is anything to go by, but she has tried too many times to make Gabrielle see sense and she knows that fighting her on this won’t do either of them any good.

She holds back when they work, as though she can lead by example and force Gabrielle to take it easy. It’s quite the achievement from her, to tell the truth of it; Gabrielle has never seen her hold back before. Her swings are lazy, striking with barely a quarter of her strength and parrying just enough to keep from being hit. It’s a thoughtful gesture, or would be if she hadn’t been right yesterday when she accused Gabrielle of being more stubborn than her and Xena. She might be holding back, but Gabrielle does not.

“Focus, Amarice!” Her voice is very hoarse, rasping painfully in her throat after only a short while; it’s exertion, she tells herself just like she did last night. It’s exertion, and that means it’s her own doing. “You’re supposed to take advantage of a weak opponent, not give her a chance to take advantage of you.”

“I know that!” Amarice is frustrated, annoyed with herself for not giving her best and upset that Gabrielle won’t accept that she can’t do this. “You’ve seen me fight. You know I’m every bit as good as you are.”

“Not with these.” She holds up the sai; she has one, Amarice has the other. “These aren’t like swords, Amarice. You can’t just hack and slash at random and hope that you’ll connect with something sooner or later. You have to…” Her vision blurs, fading out into a memory of a recent fight, of the heat igniting in her chest when she struck with the pommel, of the new weight behind her blows, of how it made her feel alive and whole in a way that violence never made her feel before. “You have to _focus_. You have to watch my every move, take advantage of every opening.”

“Easy enough.” Amarice sulks. “You’re all openings and no moves.”

“ _Amarice_.”

“Okay, okay all right. You made your freaking point. Focus, watch your moves, take advantage of your openings. I got it, already.”

They both sigh. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Amarice isn’t responding well to criticism here; she never has before, and all the more so when it comes from Gabrielle. If it was Xena here in her place, they both know that she’d be playing the model student, obeying every little instruction no matter how trite or redundant without uttering even a word of protestation.

Gabrielle still hasn’t earned that respect, apparently, for all that Amarice insists she impressed her. She understands the feeling, though it’s a challenge not to resent it just now. Still, because this is as much about her as it is about Amarice, she chokes down her pride and tries again.

They go another two bouts before Gabrielle allows them a break. She doesn’t want to give in, even then, but her gods-forsaken body forces her hand. The deck is dipping and swerving under her feet in a way that has nothing at all to do with seasickness, and her vision is so blurry that she almost misses an easy, half-hearted thrust from Amarice. It’s bad and she knows it, but she locks her knees and keeps herself upright, refusing to let Amarice see how weak she still is.

“Enough,” she says.

She’s breathing very hard, and her throat is as dry as dust. Still, she makes it about this and them, about calling a logical stop to a training session that was doomed before it even began, and not about her pain at all.

To her credit, Amarice plays it that way too, handing back the sai with a careless smile and a well-intentioned shrug. Her fingertips linger over Gabrielle’s knuckles, though, like she wants to steady her but knows all too well what will happen if she tries it.

“You all right?”

 _No,_ Gabrielle thinks. Her head is swimming. _No, I’m definitely not all right._

She crouches to slip the sai back into her boots, and stays down there for a very long time, knees high and head hanging low between them. She catches her breath, sweating heavily, then slowly straightens.

“I’m fine,” she says at last. “I just need some… some water.”

There’s probably some truth in that, though given the state she’s in she doubts she’ll be able to swallow any. She’s not sure she trusts her body to do anything at all right now, let alone what she knows is best for it. Still, Amarice leaps into action as though it’s the most crucial task in the world, like she doesn’t realise it’s most likely futile. She must be really worried, Gabrielle thinks; usually it takes an army to make her move that fast.

“Okay,” she squeaks, visibly upset. “Okay, sure. You just… you just sit down right here. Just sit down, okay? And, like, try not to move too much?” She says it like a question, like she has no idea what she’s doing. “I’ll go fetch the water. You just stay still.”

Gabrielle chuckles, but she does sit down. She can feel the colour, and the strength, draining out of her, and scrambles to distract them from it. “Finally, she does what I tell her…”

“Pfft, shut up.” It’s bravado, but at least it’s something. “ _‘Go find me some water’_ is easy. _‘Don’t lift your shoulders’_ is just stupid.”

Gabrielle tries to focus, but it’s suddenly very hard. “We just went through this,” she says; blessedly, her voice is steadier than her vision. “Your power has to come from your—”

“By the gods, not this again!” She laughs, but it’s strangled and much too high. “I’m going, all right? I’m going. Anything to get out of another freaking lecture about posture.”

She rushes off, then, all but tripping over her own feet as she ducks down below deck. Gabrielle is thankful for the silence that follows, the solitude that lets her slip off the stoic mask she’s been wearing. Weakness is wearing, but not nearly as much as trying to be strong, and she is beyond exhausted now.

Amarice is a good Amazon, and a very good friend, but trying to protect her from her fears is no simple task; she’s too much like Xena in the way she sees through everything, the way she recognises all the things Gabrielle is trying to hide, and she’s too much like Gabrielle in the way she assumes they mean the worst. She recognised the danger in leaving her shoulder untended long before Gabrielle herself was willing to accept it, and Gabrielle finds herself more frustrated than she’d ever admit to have to pretend that she knew it all along, to pretend that she didn’t call it paranoia straight to Amarice’s face.

Gabrielle isn’t stupid. She knows that Amarice was right, that the wound on her shoulder has been festering almost since she got it. She knows that she should have mentioned it to Xena, that she should have accepted that she didn’t know what she was doing when she burned it shut in a haze of tears and screams and impotent rage. She knows, too, that she shouldn’t have offered to train a stubborn young Amazon when she couldn’t even hold down her own breakfast. She knows all of those things perfectly well. She just wanted so desperately to believe that they weren’t true, that she was stronger than that, that she really could take care of herself.

She is sick. She’s sick from the sea, sick from the festering wound that should be healed by now, sick from the horror and the dread of going back to the one place in the known world she swore she would never return to and sickened by the memories of what happened the last time she was there. She’s sick in her body, sick in her blood and her bones, sick right down to her soul. She’s driving herself back towards the grave, driving herself down a dangerous, stupid path; she knows that she is. But knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to stop.

She doesn’t need Amarice claiming that she knows these things because she’s an Amazon, and she definitely doesn’t need Xena who really does know these things because she’s lived a fuller life than her companions can imagine. She doesn’t need either of them telling her what she is or what she should feel. She’s supposed to be better now; she’s supposed to be stronger and tougher and more. Wasn’t it just last night that Amarice looked at her and told her that? Wasn’t it just last night that she said _‘you impressed me’_? Wasn’t it just a few days ago that the god of war looked her in the eye and said she had potential?

Where are all those reassurances now? Where were they in that dark, desolate forest after Mavican threw a rock into her shoulder? Where was _‘you impressed me’_ and _‘you have potential’_ when she was failing three times in a row to burn that damned wound closed? Where were they after the fourth and final time, when she screamed until she sobbed? Where were they when she actually needed them?

When she told Xena that they had to make this journey, when she insisted that going back to Britannia was the right thing to do, the only thing they could do, she felt almost unstoppable. She was so sure that she could handle any pain that place threw at her, any memories the sight of it dredged back up. Now, on her way there, she feels close to death. Worse, she feels like she’s always been close to death, that it’s only now and here and _this_ that’s forcing her to realise it.

It’s no surprise that when Amarice comes back, she’s got Xena in tow.

Gabrielle hasn’t seen Xena since yesterday, and she doesn’t relish seeing her again like this. It’s bad enough that she saw her in the throes of seasickness, that they argued when she was too weak to hold her side of it, that they left things unsettled between them. This is far worse; this time she doesn’t even have the strength to pretend it’s nothing more than the rocking of the boat.

“Hey,” she croaks, and doesn’t even bother to hide the dizziness.

Xena doesn’t bother to return the greeting. Visibly seething, she kneels in front of her, one hand on her forehead and the other on her wound. “How long were you planning on keeping this from me?” she demands. “A day? A week? Or just until it killed you?”

“It’s not going to kill me.” It takes all of her strength to keep from slurring. “I was taking care of it on my own. It just heals slower out here, that’s all. It’s not my fault there’s no herbs on the ship.”

“Yes it is!” Xena shouts, sharp and utterly unforgiving. “If you’d told me you needed herbs on the ship, I would have made sure there were herbs on the damn ship. If you’d told me that thing was healing badly, if you’d told me it was festering… by the gods, Gabrielle, if you’d told me _anything_!”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to argue, but no sound comes out. There are so many arguments she wants to make, so many justifications for the choices she made, but her throat is so dry and her head is pounding like an Amazon ceremonial drum, and she’s always been so, so helpless when Xena is looking at her like that.

She tries to fight it off, to tell Xena that this is her fault for coddling her, for being over-protective, for never seeing what she can do, that it’s her fault for making her feel like this is the only way she can be strong enough. She tries so hard, but all the fight has gone out of her now, and it’s taken the last of her strength along with it.

“I told her to tell you,” Amarice is mumbling; she did no such thing, of course, but she can clearly see that Gabrielle is in no condition to call her a liar just now. She’s chewing her lower lip, though, and the anguish on her face makes it hard to be too annoyed. “She’s gonna be okay, right?”

“She will be now,” Xena growls. The implication of that is heavy and pointed — _‘she will be because I’m here to take care of her now’_ — and it makes the blood rise up into Gabrielle’s face, washes away the pallor in an angry flush. It gives her back a little of her elusive strength, a little of the fight that’s been so quick to abandon her, and she forces herself to sit up just high enough to meet Xena’s eye.

“That,” she gets out, rasping. “That’s why I kept it from you, Xena. _That_.”

Xena flushes too; she’s just as angry as Gabrielle, but she’s more used to that particular emotion and she has more experience with holding it in check.

“Stubbornness and pride are no good reason to hide things,” she snaps. “The gods know, we’ve been together long enough. Is it really so important that you’d risk infection or worse for a little respect?”

Gabrielle swallows. It’s hard to speak properly when her mouth tastes like salt and stale vomit and her throat is serrated and raw. Amarice, ever trying to be helpful, holds up the cup of water to her lips. Gabrielle sips it as slowly as she can, drop by drop until her stomach starts to gurgle its protest, then carefully pulls away. She finds Amarice’s hand and gives it a gentle, grateful squeeze.

“Thank you,” she manages.

Amarice holds on tight, knuckles turning as white as Gabrielle’s. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I got you.”

Slowly, shivering all over, Gabrielle turns back to Xena. “It’s not just about a little respect, Xena,” she says, proud of how steady she keeps her voice. “And it’s not about pride. It’s about everything. You have to let me try to take care of myself.”

“And what happens when I do?” Xena counters, still hot. “We end up in the middle of some gods-forsaken ocean, on the way to the one place in the world that neither one of us ever wanted to see again, with you on the floor and me desperately trying to keep you in one piece. We end up with you making stupid decisions and stupid mistakes, and me wishing you’d just been honest.”

“I was honest.” Even now, she has to believe that. “I told you it would heal, and it will.”

“When? A year from now? A lifetime? After you force me to cut your arm off?” She’s exaggerating, of course, but the look in her eye is very serious. “It’s not worth it, Gabrielle. It’s not worth letting you stretch your wings just to get yourself maimed or worse because you won’t accept a little help from the woman who loves you. I won’t just sit back and watch your choices land you in—”

“— _the grave_?” Gabrielle finishes for her. The word strikes hard, making Xena and Amarice flinch, but she stays strong. “Like they did last time, you mean?”

“Gabrielle!”

“No, Xena. _No_. I already died for my choices. I chose you, and I died for it. I bled and I died and I walked through Hell because I chose you. I don’t care if it’s stupid or dangerous or anything else. I would make that choice again a thousand times over if I had to.” It’s the truth, and all three of them know it. “We’re past the place where you get to slap me on the wrist for being stupid. We’re past the place where you get to fix all of my mistakes, and we are past the place where you get to patch me up and make everything better with a poultice and a lecture. I have to… I have to be able to heal myself. I have to be able to do it, Xena. I can’t… I won’t let you… I won’t let _me_ …”

“So you’ll make yourself sick for it? You’ll send yourself back to Hell, or Tartarus or wherever, just to make some stubborn, stupid point?”

“That’s not going to happen.” She glances from Xena to Amarice, catches the wide-eyed fear in both of their faces; if she had enough strength left, she’d throw up her hands in despair. “Why are you two so obsessed with this?”

Xena does throw up hers; Gabrielle envies her penchant for melodrama. “Because you keep doing things like this!”

With a great force of will, Gabrielle drags herself up to her feet. She’s swaying more violently than the deck at this point, lurching against the rhythm of the waves, and she braces herself against the rail. Xena rises with her, keeping one hand at her face, but Amarice stays crouched, like she realises she can’t be a part of this, like she understands that it goes beyond anything she can do or say or feel.

“Xena,” Gabrielle says. She’s slurring a little, and her stomach is very queasy, but she powers through because she has to make her understand as well. “I can handle a bad wound. I can handle a little seasickness or dehydration or whatever else this voyage throws at me. I can and I will take care of myself. I… Xena, I have to. Can’t you see that? Can’t you at least try to understand _why_?”

“I do understand why.” She sounds more desperate than certain, though. “Gabrielle, I—”

“Xena, no. It’s not about what you see when you look at me. It’s not about whether I can make you proud or make you respect me. It’s not… Xena, for once it’s not about _you_. It’s about _me_. It’s about…”

“It’s about where we’re going,” Xena says, almost impossibly low. “Gabrielle, I _do_ understand. But you have to know that it won’t do any good. You can’t heal the past by trying to heal the present.”

“I know that.” She’s not sure if that’s true just yet, but she’s close enough to make it sound convincing. “But I… I have to start somewhere. I have to do _something_. Before we get there, before it all comes back, I have to remind myself that I’ve changed. I have to remind myself that I’m more than I was, that I’m strong now, that I…” She trails off, voice shaking. “Xena, I have to prove to myself that I can do this.”

“And what if you can’t?” Xena’s voice is shaking too. That’s a blow in itself.

“I _can_ ,” Gabrielle says, with a conviction that shakes her soul. “I have to.”

*

She can. It takes time and a great deal of suffering, but she can and she does.

She staggers back down to the hold to ride it out, back to the unpleasant familiarity of her dank little corner and her moth-eaten blanket. She relishes the peace and quiet she finds there, the solitude and the silence, but she definitely does not relish the way it accentuates the movement of the ship. It’s a thousand times worse down in the darkness with no fresh air to settle her stomach, nothing to hold onto and keep her steady, no distant horizon to help keep her vision focused. She vomits a few times and dry heaves endlessly when her stomach is empty, and spends hours on end trying to keep her aching body moving in rhythm with the rolling of the sea.

The wound festers, hot and livid and wet, but she keeps it clean and treats it as best she can with what little she has available. Amarice was right when she lamented the lack of healing herbs on board — and okay, yes, Xena was right too when she blamed Gabrielle for not telling her that she needed them — but there’s plenty of clean water, and no shortage of liquor with the right smile aimed at the right sailor. Smiling is hard work, and all the more so feeling as ill as she does, but it’s no challenge at all to look pitiful and that’s good enough for most of them. She can make do, can work well enough with what’s here, and it will be enough. She knows that it’ll get worse before it gets better, but she also knows that it _will_ get better if she can just wait it out. She’s armed against it, even as she feels her fever climb.

Amarice brings her drinking water a few times. Gabrielle sips slowly and swallows carefully; she looks into her face as she drinks, and measures her own condition by how deep the lines run. Even here in the dark, she can see her health reflected in Amarice’s eyes, can trace the arc of her progress; she can tell, too, when her fever rises and subsides, because Amarice looks terrified and hopeful by turns. If she had the strength, she’d tell her that this is normal, or at the very least that it’s normal for her. Xena might endure a festering wound with little more than a shrug and a sigh, but Gabrielle’s body has always been brutal when it flushes out things like this; she knows this, and she wishes she was strong enough to make sure Amarice knows it too.

She doesn’t have the strength to spell it all out, though. Instead, she just thanks her for the water and kisses her fingertips when she draws the cup away from her mouth. Once or twice, she asks for more liquor; Amarice tries to laugh, to turn it into a kind of joke — _“you sure you should be drinking?”_ — but the levity dies in a panicked choke, and Gabrielle wonders if maybe she doesn’t have the strength either. Worry can break a body as easily as infection, she knows, and wonders if that’s why she’s always the one who suffers while Xena shrugs.

Amarice is just as sensitive as she is, mouth tight when she asks about the liquor. Gabrielle tells her with kindness and compassion that it’s just to keep the wound clean, just to help it along, just to be safe.

She pretends she doesn’t notice the way Amarice repeats it back to herself, _‘safe’_ echoing over and over and over as she leaves.

Xena doesn’t come to see her at all. It’s a strange, sad feeling, looking at the space she would normally fill and realising that she’s thankful it’s empty.

She drifts in and out of sleep, plagued by fever-sharp visions-dreams-memories of Britannia, of Dahak’s temple, of Khrafstar’s soft smile and the way it hardened, of Meridian’s sweet voice and the way the blood poured out of her. She can feel it all, the violence and the blood and the panic, the seizing of her heart in that endless, terrible moment when she realised what was happening. She feels the blood on her hands, wet and hot, feels the panic and the grief and the depthless horror. She feels everything just as she did back then, and the pain in her body when she jolts herself awake is so potent and so powerful that for a moment or two she’s so sure that she really is back there, hung suspended over the altar, paralysed and broken inside, strangled by the flames.

The heat is very real, she realises, and so too is the pain, but when her bleary vision finally comes into focus there is no flame and no altar. There’s just the sweat on her skin, the wound on her shoulder, and the floorboards cold and wet against her body.

She loses herself more than once. She comes around maybe a dozen times, delirious and dreaming and dizzy with no idea where she is or how she got there or why the world is in motion around her. She hears a distant echo of her voice, but she doesn’t really know what she’s saying, and before she can lift her head and make sense of it all, she’s gone again, pulled under by the swelling waves, the ones inside and the ones all around her, the darkness of the hold and the darkness in her head, the chaos of the world she’s in reflecting all too perfectly the one she carries inside her.

She falls, rises, falls and falls again; she sweats and sickens feels herself growing weaker. It’s a lifetime later when she finally surfaces for good, but when she does she finds the world inside her has righted itself. The one on the outside is still in violent motion, but inside her head is blessedly calm.

Amarice is at her side when she opens her eyes. She’s smiling, shivering, and holding her hand.

“Thank the gods,” she breathes, and Gabrielle is sure she catches a glimmer of tears, even in the dank and the dark.

Gabrielle licks her lips. They’re so dry the contact almost hurts. “Hi.”

“Hi!” The word is a squeak. “You… I mean, I… I mean, you…” She flounders, the awkwardness more welcome than Gabrielle can put into words right now. “Uh, here…”

She holds out a cup, the process familiar by now. Gabrielle wets her parched lips, and swallows very slowly. “Thank you, Amarice.”

“Yeah.” She leans back to give Gabrielle a little space, and folds her hands in her lap. “You… uh… you were pretty out of it for a while.”

Gabrielle musters a chuckle. It’s raspy, but real. “Yeah. That happens.”

It does, embarrassingly often, but only ever to her. She’s seen Xena recover from wounds infinitely worse than this and scarcely even lose her focus. She’s seen her cut down entire armies with poison running through her veins while she, Gabrielle, gets delirious for days on end if she just scrapes her knee. This is far from the first time she’s been floored by something like this, a simple wound made complicated, and she’s under no illusion that it will be the last. For all her insistences, all her begging and pleading to take care of herself, some things even she can’t sidestep; apparently, a weak constitution is one of them. If this voyage has been good for anything, it’s been a stark reminder of that.

Amarice is chewing her lip, still fearful despite all the evidence. “You’re okay, though?” she asks. “Still here with us?”

“I’m still here.” She sits up, very slowly and very carefully. The world is pitching and swaying around her, but she knows that that’s the way it’s supposed to be. No delirium this time, just the sea. “Still with you.”

Amarice doesn’t hug her, though Gabrielle can tell that she really wants to. She’s watching over her like a hawk, though, as though she’s afraid that Gabrielle will stop breathing if she stops counting her breaths. Weak though she is, Gabrielle can’t stop herself leaning in, reaching out to offer some comfort. Her hands are shaking, her head swimming, but she’s strong enough to cup Amarice’s face with one hand, strong enough to trace the curve of her cheek with her thumb, strong enough to ground them both with fingertips and palm and a smile.

It’s a reassurance, the contact, of the same kind that Xena used to offer her back in the days when she was young and afraid of everything. She remembers the feeling, anxiety surging like blood in her chest the first time she saw Xena get hurt, the first time she watched her stitch up a stab wound or push an arrow through someone else’s body. She always felt faint, dizzy at the sight of so much blood and gore and mortality; what a stupid, naïve kid she was to believe that there was no more blood in the world than the stuff that oozed from a flesh wound.

Amarice isn’t quite like that. Gabrielle has never seen her flinch at a wound, no matter how bad, at least not for the same reasons. She doesn’t faint at the sight of blood or turn pale at too much healer’s talk like Gabrielle did in those early days; she’s a warrior born and bred, and even the ugliest, most disgusting wounds are just another day’s work for her. It’s not about the wound or the fever or the seasickness or any of the base physical stuff that might once have made Gabrielle turn pale; for Amarice, it’s the _fear_ that cripples her, the idea of watching someone she cares about die for the second time. She’s still so raw from Rome, and still so afraid of seeing it repeated.

The press of Gabrielle’s hand, sweaty and rough though it is, seems to comfort her. She turns her face to the side, eyes halfway closed, and sighs against Gabrielle’s palm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t… it was stupid of me to talk you into training me before we got back on dry land.” She says it as though the choice was wholly hers, as though she held a knife to Gabrielle’s neck and forced her to draw her sai; Gabrielle tries to wave it off, but of course Amarice is as relentless and stubborn in her apologies as in everything else. “I knew you were sick and you hadn’t eaten or really drank or whatever, and I knew that your wound was bad. I should’ve told you to lie down or take it easy or something, but I just…”

Gabrielle musters a chuckle. It’s hoarse and very painful in her throat, but it feels good. “I know,” she says, tired but tender. It’s true; she does. “You just wanted a chance to show me what you were capable of. A chance to…”

“…to impress you too,” Amarice mumbles, and pulls away. The flush on her skin is obvious even in the dark. “Stupid, huh?”

“A little, yeah.” She takes the cup, sips a little more water to soothe her throat. “Amarice, you don’t need to impress me or Xena or anyone else. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Not yet,” Amarice mutters, mostly to herself.

Gabrielle sighs; she’s not strong enough yet to say everything she wants to, but it strikes her hard in the chest just how deeply she understands what Amarice is talking about, the lonely, scared helplessness she’s feeling.

“Not ever,” she says. “Amarice, no-one is going to send you away if you’re not… if you’re not ‘impressive’ enough. You don’t have to stand toe-to-toe with Xena every minute of every day. The gods know, if that was the case, she would have sent me away years ago.” It’s not meant as self-pity, simply as a fact. “You don’t need to be perfect, okay?”

“You say that,” Amarice says, stubborn but incredibly vulnerable. “Until one day it’s not true any more.”

Gabrielle doesn’t bother telling her again that that day won’t come. She knows from her own experience that Amarice wouldn’t believe it even if she said it a thousand times. Even if the gods themselves showed her a future decades from now with the three of them still together, she doubts Amarice would put any faith in it. Youth needs to learn by being and doing and seeing, not by hearing or hoping. Amarice has to see the truth for herself, has to discover it day by day, just as Gabrielle did.

“It’s true now,” she says softly. “How about we let that be enough?”

Amarice sighs, but concedes the point. She’s studying the line of Gabrielle’s throat, watching the way it moves when she drinks, and there’s a strange look on her face. There’s a little of her usual anxiety, but it’s tinged now with something stronger, a kind of hesitant curiosity. She looks like she’s burning with questions, like she wants to turn the tide of conversation elsewhere but is frightened of where that path will lead.

Gabrielle feels a knot start to tangle her stomach; it’s a sensation utterly removed from the queasy churning she’s all but grown used to by now, and it stretches out inside of her until it makes her feel full.

“What is it?” she asks, though she suspects she already knows.

Amarice stares at her for a moment, seeming to capture her courage, then blurts out in a rush “Who’s Meridian?”

The name, said aloud for the first time in years, slams into her like the worst kind of blow, sucking the air right out of her lungs and bringing the water back up in a choking, heaving explosion. Gabrielle doubles over, feeling the pain in a place far deeper than her body, and it’s a long, long time before she stops gasping and finds her breath again.

“That’s…” She tries to swallow. Her whole body seizes up. “That’s a complicated question.”

“I figured.” Amarice twists her hands in her lap. She looks like a part of her wants to take the question back, to pretend she never asked, while the rest of her can’t quite let it go. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry or anything. It’s just… you sounded so…”

“ _Please_.” She’s sweating, shaking, but it has nothing to do with any of the myriad ailments she’s been fighting off. She can’t breathe again, and this time a part of her doesn’t want to. The best part of two years has done nothing at all to lessen the impact of that name, or dull the blade-sharp edge of the memories it brings up. “I can’t… I just… I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m sorry. I…”

“Okay.” Amarice looks stricken, caught between fear and concern. “It’s okay. It’s all right. You don’t have to. It was just a dumb question.”

She reaches for her with a kind of urgency, catches Gabrielle’s wrist between her fingers for a heartbeat or two, but Gabrielle flinches and pulls away before she can lean further in. The skin on her wrist is unexpectedly sensitive; she’s not used to having that part of her unprotected like this, exposed to the elements and touching little intimacies like this. She feels everything now, and to an overwhelming degree.

It’s too much. Coupled with the memories, the visions still dancing and swirling inside her head, Dahak’s temple and the altar and the fire, Khrafstar’s voice and Meridian’s smile and Meridian’s blood and _Meridian_ … it’s all too much, and she crawls backwards like a child afraid of the sea.

It’s been a long time since she reacted this violently to something so simple and well-meaning, since she thought of physical contact as something to be afraid of. She can’t remember the last time she felt such an overpowering need to run away from something that has always brought her comfort.

“I have to go,” she whispers. Her voice is shaking, but not nearly as hard as her body. “I have to… I need to go.”

She’s on her feet before she even realised she has the strength to stand at all, stumbling back and clinging to the walls to keep her upright, fumbling and scrabbling for a way out of the cramped, dark, terrifying hold.

Amarice stares after her with her mouth half open; she looks like she wants to follow but can’t seem to move at all, like she’s frozen in place. She looks like Gabrielle feels, like she’s gazing into the face of something she doesn’t understand, something she shouldn’t want to understand. Gabrielle wants to calm her somehow, to tell her that it’s all right, that she’s all right too, but she can’t. She’s _not_ all right, and even if she was she’s lost the power of speech. She feels like an animal caught in a trap, forced to chew off its own leg if it wants to survive, and she has no idea how in the world she’s holding herself up at all.

“Gabrielle?” Amarice sounds terrified.

“I have to go…” Gabrielle manages again. It’s the only thing she can say, the only thing she can process, the only words that don’t send her back there. “I have to get out of here. I need some fresh air. I need to… I have to _go_.”

She spins on her heels, too dizzy to see, and flees.

*

Up on deck, she tries to slow her racing heart.

The flash of sunlight as she stumbles up from below leaves her almost blind. The view hasn’t changed at all, and there’s no way to know how long she’s been down in the hold, but apparently it was long enough that she’s all but adjusted to the darkness. Hours, definitely; days, quite probably. Time has a habit of bleeding and fading when she’s on board a ship anyway, and this isn’t the first time she’s lost track of it. She could ask Xena or the captain, but why would she bother? It’s enough that she’s still in one piece. It’s enough that she reached the other side.

She sits down in the middle of the deck, not caring if she’s in anybody’s way. She’s too weak to stand on her own for very long, but she doesn’t want to go back to the rail; she’s spent too long hanging over that gods-forsaken thing already.

Gasping, panicking, struggling to find some kind of inner calm, she lets herself think of Eli. She tries to remember the techniques he taught her, tries to remember how naturally the stillness came to him; he could summon love and peace from within himself almost without a thought, and Gabrielle tries desperately to emulate that now as she did in that cramped prison cell in Rome. She was waiting for her death back then, locked up with Eli and Amarice and maybe a dozen others; now she is alive and whole and has no reason not to be still and calm, but somehow that inner peace has never felt so far away.

It’s strange, how different she feels inside of herself now. Amarice smiled when she said _“you came back more,”_ lit up like it’s a good thing, but Xena’s reactions tell a different story entirely. She tenses at the sight of her now, in a way she never did before, and she cringes when Gabrielle draws her sai; she’s been so protective lately, as if the whole world depends on keeping her safe. It’s like she’s trying to protect her from herself, shielding the young, innocent girl she fell in love with from the broken and brutal woman who was pulled down from a Roman cross.

Gabrielle doesn’t know where those changes have come from, really. She just knows that they’re there.

Eli’s path once brought her such perfect peace; now it makes her panic again. Trying to find that tranquillity, that absolute calm is futile with Meridian in her mind and Britannia on the horizon; the stillness rends her to the bone. It’s only when she reaches down to grip the handle of her sai that she is able to catch her breath and quiet the gut-rending horror. It’s only when she touches her weapons and remembers her strength that she can feel safe.

 _What’s wrong with me?_ The question echoes inside of her, sounding off the walls in her head like a death knell. _What have I become, that the only peace I find is in raising weapons? Isn’t that what got me in trouble the last time I was here?_

She doesn’t realise that she’s not alone until she feels a hand on her shoulder.

It’s Xena. She know that without turning around, and the realisation strikes her with a flash of unexpected emotion. Her body can’t decide whether to lean into the touch as it always has before, or flinch back and run away like she did with Amarice. It seizes, freezes in her blood, and suddenly her fingers are too slick to hold the sai. They slip away, fall to the deck, and she braces herself against the damp wood.

“Xena,” she manages.

“You’ve got a bit of your colour back.” There’s a tender sort of smile in Xena’s voice, so Gabrielle knows it must be true. “You’re looking more like yourself.”

 _I don’t feel more like myself,_ Gabrielle thinks, but she doesn’t have the heart or the stomach to say so.

“Thank you,” she says, and sighs.

Xena sits down next to her, flopping down onto the deck like a fish. It’s incredible, the way she does that, boneless and limbless yet still somehow so graceful. She moves like she belongs there, like it’s just a given that Gabrielle would want her close, like this is just another quiet little moment between them. If she looks up at her long enough, Gabrielle can almost imagine they’re a thousand leagues from here.

“Andred says we’ll be making land in a day or so,” Xena says. “A day and a half at the most.”

Gabrielle feels the nausea burn away in her throat. “Thank the gods.”

Xena frowns; that clearly wasn’t the response she expected. “Gabrielle…”

It’s only when she touches her arm, fingers locking tight like a warning, that the significance of it strikes, as it should have from the moment she said it. _Land_ , Gabrielle realises thickly, and feels the horror rise up again. _That_ land. The one she’s still not ready to face.

“…oh.”

“Yeah.” It sounds almost like an apology, like Xena was the one who wanted this all along, like Gabrielle didn’t twist her arm every step of the way. “You were down there licking your wounds for… well, a long time.” She huffs a sigh, then leans in to study the weary lines on Gabrielle’s face. “Might be for the best. I was starting to worry I’d have to knock you unconscious before you lost your stomach lining.”

“It’s not been the best voyage,” Gabrielle admits.

Gingerly, she touches her stomach. It still hurts, the dull throb of too many cramps in too short a time, but the nausea is bearable now in a way that it wasn’t the last time she sat up here like this. A little late, but a victory nonetheless.

Xena lets her hand cover Gabrielle’s. “We’ve had better.”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to say _‘we’ve had worse too’_ , but she’s not really sure that’s true. She’s not had a great deal of time to really think about it, but she knows herself well enough to know that her suffering runs deeper than it usually does, even during her worst infected wounds or her most relentless bouts of seasickness. What she’s been feeling on this journey runs a lot deeper than the sour taste in her mouth or the heat searing her shoulder; it’s not the sort of thing that clean water or pressure points could ever mend. She probably knew it before they even stepped on board, but admitting these things always comes hard.

“Well, at least the worst is over now,” she says, then shudders. “I mean, the worst _is_ over, isn’t it? No raging sea gods or storms on the horizon?”

“None the last time I checked,” Xena says with a wry laugh. “But I’ll keep a look out for you.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Meanwhile,” Xena presses, kind but serious, “if you’re feeling better, maybe you should see if you can manage something to eat.”

Gabrielle grimaces. “I don’t know if I’m feeling _that_ much better…”

Xena’s expression softens into a sad sort of smile. No doubt she expected that. “I know,” she says. “But you need to at least try. It’s all right if you can’t keep it down, but your stomach will thank you for the effort. Believe me, it’s better than the alternative.”

“I know,” Gabrielle says, and bites down to keep from reminding them both, again, that she has been through this before. “I’ll try.”

Xena doesn’t hug her, but her fingers are twitching when she drops her hands back to her sides and Gabrielle knows that she desperately wants to. “That’s my girl.”

She sounds so sincere, so genuine. It’s vividly different from the resentment and the anger that plagued her as they journeyed to the shore. Gabrielle knows better than to expect that she’s forgiven her for dragging them both back to Britannia, but at least for now she’s closer to her old self; it brings Gabrielle closer too, brings the two of them closer to what they should be, what they always have been to each other.

She can tell that Xena is working very hard to stay true to her promise, to see her and let her do what she needs; she’s always making suggestions but never pushing, giving advice without ever stepping in to take over. She’s taken Gabrielle’s plea to heart, even as in the moment it’s clearly killing her, and Gabrielle doesn’t know whether to be grateful for the effort or ashamed of herself for demanding it.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “The last thing I wanted was to be a burden.”

“You’re never a burden,” Xena tells her, quite firmly. “Don’t you know that by now?”

“I guess not.” She takes a deep breath. She can feel the deck moving; the waves are big and heavy underneath, and they roll straight through her. It’s a convenient excuse for the way her throat closes up. “Xena, I…”

But she can’t say it. Just the sight of Xena’s face is enough send her back to that temple, as surely and as violently as Amarice’s innocent question a few minutes ago. She knows that Xena is wrestling with her own demons, knows that she’s struggling just as badly to reconcile what she feels with what she sees, the woman Gabrielle wants her to see with the girl she fell in love with. She was right when she said that none of this is easy for her, and if they were on their way to anywhere else in the world Gabrielle knows that their positions would be reversed right now; Xena would be the one without words and Gabrielle the one with them, the one with the smiles and the lingering touches, with the countless subtle ways of saying _‘it’ll be all right’_.

It’s not anywhere else in the world, though. It’s Britannia, and when Gabrielle looks at Xena and sees all of those struggles in her, all she can think about is Dahak’s temple. All she can see is the horror on Xena’s face when she walked in and saw what had happened. All she can feel is the tentative, almost frightened way that Xena held her. All she can remember is that awful moment, barely a second later, when she left her to be devoured by the flames. All she knows is how much it hurt, and how Xena’s best efforts weren’t enough to save her in the end.

She doesn’t resent Xena for what happened. How could she? After everything that came after, Hope and Solan and the mess in Chin, how could she even begin to blame Xena for one moment’s distraction? They hashed out their differences, worked through them all a long time ago, and Gabrielle has never been the sort of person who could cling to her bad feelings. She understands, she really does.

It’s just that it’s been a long, long time since she last felt quite as helpless as this. Even in Rome, armed and furious and forced into the role of defender, forced to abandon every ideal she’d found for herself, still she felt some semblance of control. Even as they beat Xena, even as they surrounded them both and took them prisoner, even as they prepared their bodies for the cross… even then Gabrielle was the one who fought and the one who failed. Every ounce of pain she felt was of her own making and by her own mistakes.

They’d never been in that position before. Xena had never been the helpless one, and Gabrielle had never been the one who had to defend her, the one who had to fight for both of their lives.

Maybe that’s opened her eyes to the things inside Xena that she wasn’t willing to accept before now, to see in her for the first time some measure of fallibility. Maybe, yes, because ever since then she’s been afraid to leave any part of herself in Xena’s hands. She’s been in that position now, and she knows how completely it rends the soul to try and fail to protect the woman she loves.

She wouldn’t wish that feeling on Xena ever again, and it makes her sick to her stomach — literally, on this gods-forsaken ocean — to look back at her time in Britannia and know that she already put her through it once before.

“Gabrielle?” Xena’s looking at her like she hangs the moon and stars. That only makes it harder. “Gabrielle, what is it?”

“Nothing.” Her throat rasps as she tries to swallow. She is so tired of swallowing. “Nothing at all.”

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

A day and a half, and they do make land.

Gabrielle stays up on deck, though the weather is still far from enjoyable. The mist over the water is foreboding, the threat of rain and wind ever looming, but the cool, fresh air helps her to feel a little better. She still feels hot inside, weak and sickly, but she’s not so feverish any more and the wound on her shoulder is no longer festering. Just like she said it would, at long last, it is healing. Just like she said she would, unpleasant though it was, she took care of it herself.

It’s a comfort, if a small one, to know that she was right after all, that she was capable, that she could do this and that she did. Xena might shake her head, might call the suffering needless and pointless, a waste of much-needed strength; Amarice might look at her like she’s something fragile, like the delicate peace-loving flower she was when they first met. They might both be right to think and say those things, but it was never about what they thought or said.

Gabrielle wasn’t trying to prove anything to them; she was trying to prove it to herself. She had to remind herself that she will not be broken again, that she can take care of herself, that the grim dark line cresting the horizon will not hurt her this time. It’s been a painful, exhausting journey, but it was _her_ journey and it was for her sake that she survived it.

The destination is much harder than the journey, though, and her body knows it too. She’s been staving off the seasickness well enough in the time since she came back above deck; she still hasn’t managed any of Amarice’s disgusting gruel, but one of the deckhands brewed her a strange bitter-tasting tea that went down surprisingly well, and she’s been steady for a while now.

She naturally assumed that meant it was over, but the sight of Britannia, silhouetted like a warning on the horizon, brings the feeling back as though it never left.

Feeling it rise again, she holds on to the rail until her knuckles go white, clenching her jaw until it does too. With dry land so close now, she refuses to give in to the sensation again. Her body might be miserable again, her limbs still wracked with shivers, but she has regained a great deal of her strength since she came back up here, and she uses it well. Her stubbornness, it seems, is healing just as well as her wound now, and she holds the sensation back by sheer force of will. She’s come through too much on this gods-forsaken voyage to let it end on a bad note.

“Look at you, all strong and stoic.”

The voice brings her out of herself, brings a smile to her face; for the first time in far too many days it comes easily and without any pain.

“Amarice.”

“Hey.” She’s smiling too, an ear-to-ear grin splitting her face. “Bet it’s a relief to see land, huh?”

“My stomach thinks so.” It doesn’t yet, but it will soon enough, and she’s always been an optimist. “The rest of me…”

Amarice sucks in a breath. Gabrielle has been evasive with her about Britannia and everything it means, but she understands enough that she doesn’t need it spelled out for her. “Not so much?”

“Not so much,” Gabrielle says with a tired sigh. “I feel raw.”

“Well, you did spend the whole journey turning yourself inside-out. Kind of figures that you’d feel that way.” Even through the obvious concern, she keeps her voice light and cheerful, no doubt in the hope of encouraging Gabrielle to feel the same way. “Maybe you’ll feel better about it when you’re actually there? I mean, maybe it won’t be as bad as you think…”

“Maybe.”

The word echoes in her ears, making her strangely dizzy. She remembers Xena saying it back at the start of the voyage, the lack of conviction in her voice. She remembers looking up at her, hopeful and so terribly sick, remembers wondering out loud if the pressure points weren’t working because she’d come back from the dead, if maybe it had changed her nerves or her senses somehow. She remembers the shadow that passed across Xena’s face when she said that word, _‘maybe’_ to mean _‘no’_ ; she knew perfectly well that Gabrielle was wrong but she couldn’t stand to break her with the truth.

Now, with Britannia in front of her and her stomach feeling queasy all over again, Gabrielle sees it for herself. There are some places even pressure points can’t reach, and her body has always reacted viscerally to any unbalance in her soul. She was doomed before they ever set sail.

“Hey, Gabrielle?”

Gabrielle blinks, turns back to Amarice. There’s such tenderness in her voice, and in her face as well. It’s such a strange thing, compassion from the same young woman who rolls her eyes at anything that doesn’t promise violence, who resented Gabrielle when they first met because her queen refused to raise a weapon and defend her tribe.

They’ve come so far from the conflict and the clashes of their early time together, and when Amarice says her name again and touches the side of her face Gabrielle feels a little of that same tenderness ignite inside herself as well. She can’t remember the last time she felt so much warmth for someone who once infuriated her.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, marking the worry in her eyes.

“Of course not.” She squeaks it out, hasty and a little embarrassed. “It’s just… you know, you’re making a habit of this whole ‘impressing me’ thing.”

Gabrielle blinks. That’s about the last thing she expected. “I’m sorry?”

“You know. All of this. Your wound and your guts and just… all of it. You know? Who the heck puts themselves through all that stuff just to say they can? I mean, jeez.” She blushes a bit, and turns away. “You’re something else. I mean, you’re _really_ something else.”

Gabrielle is blushing a little too, though she’ll never admit it. It’s comforting, looking at Amarice and seeing that she truly means that, that she really does see all of this as something to admire.

Xena doesn’t feel the same way. She’s as furious about this as she was about the journey in the first place. But then, of course, Xena doesn’t understand. She never had to work to be strong; it was always just there, a part of her as irremovable as her limbs. Amarice, young and scrawny as she is, raised as she was among warriors of boundless strength and courage, does understand. She has that same hunger in her that Gabrielle does, the depthless ache to prove herself in a world where everyone is bigger and better than she is. She would have done the same thing, Gabrielle suspects, and that means a lot.

“I’m not anything special,” she says softly. “But thank you.”

Amarice snorts. “Just calling it like I see it.”

“Not for that.” She swallows. For the first time in days, it has nothing to do with the roiling in her stomach. “For everything.”

Amarice blushes even deeper, so much so that Gabrielle almost wonders if she’s a bit feverish too. “Nah,” she mumbles, suddenly awkward. “It was all Xena. You know what she’s like when you’re being stubborn and she’s not allowed to help. She was all _‘make sure she drinks’_ and _‘keep her hydrated’_ and all that stuff.” She coughs, a splutter like she’s trying to clear her throat but has something caught in it, then quickly adds, “I mean, not like I wouldn’t have done it anyway…”

Gabrielle chuckles. “Well, then,” she says. “Thank you both.”

She stops there, not wanting to give voice to the other thoughts crawling through her head. She doesn’t say that it doesn’t matter whose idea it was, that the important part was how it played out. Whatever Xena might have thought or wanted, still she left it to Amarice to do the task, understanding as she did that it couldn’t be her. That’s what counts: not what Xena did, but what she knew.

It’s so much easier, she thinks, to accept kindness from someone she can pretend is an equal, someone who isn’t a warrior, an idol and a lover and a hero, from someone who isn’t _Xena_. When it’s Xena doing those things — sitting by her side, helping her to drink, wiping the sweat from her face, cleaning her wound — it feels like weakness, like a kind of charity. When it’s Amarice, young and inexperienced and so much closer to herself, it feels like friendship.

Xena might never truly understand why it was so important for Gabrielle to ride this out alone, but at least she understands that.

They stand there together for a time, watching the land take shape on the horizon. Gabrielle tries not to think too hard about what it represents, tries not to wonder what might be waiting for them this time.

A part of her can’t help thinking it would almost be better to be taken in by some fresh horror or disaster or trauma, a new nightmare to overshadow the old one. She’s so tired of hurting from this, so tired of trembling when she remembers what happened and how it made her feel. She’s so tired of being broken by something that’s supposed to be over and done and in the past. At least if she’s tortured again the pain will be fresh and new, here and now and _present_. Maybe then she won’t have to feel guilty for still feeling it.

“Hey.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes for a moment. “Hey.”

Amarice’s hand covers hers. She can’t possibly know what Gabrielle is thinking, can’t possibly comprehend all the conflicting things she’s feeling, but there’s an unexpected depth to the way she touches her, the smile on her face. It’s the same desperate optimism that Gabrielle often wore in those early days, back when Xena was still haunted by her past, when she would fall prey to darker thoughts and look to her to bring her back. She recognises it well, and she knows that it’s not as true as it looks.

“It’ll be okay,” Amarice says. Her smile is so bright, so full of hope. “At least we’ll be on solid ground, right?”

Gabrielle can’t quite muster a smile of her own. She used to have hope too, until she had Hope.

“Solid ground,” she echoes, and wonders why her stomach turns sour again.

*

After so long at sea, solid ground doesn’t feel so solid.

The dock isn’t exactly sturdy, but it tilts and sways almost more violently than the deck of the ship. It’s a strange kind of unsteadiness, and it couples with the weakness in her limbs to leave her feeling boneless. Xena helps her to stay upright, supporting with an arm around her waist, and Gabrielle is too wobbly and too exhausted to even pretend she doesn’t need the support. Her whole body feels like it’s been turned to water, and it’s a challenge to see straight; she leans into the familiar strength, and clings to Xena’s arm as if her life depends on it.

It brings a kind of comfort, albeit not much, to look around and see that this time she’s not the only one struggling. Amarice is comically unsteady, and so is Andred, Boadicea’s messenger; the two of them took to life on a ship like ducks to water, but now that they’re back on dry land they’re both struggling just to keep their legs under them. It might not be much, but it helps to drive away a little of the shame that creeps up the back of Gabrielle’s neck when she loses her footing for what feels like the hundredth time.

She, at least, has Xena to keep her upright. The other two are not so fortunate. It’s Andred who loses her patience first, gritting her teeth and grinding out an unfamiliar curse when another stumbling mis-step sends her down onto one knee.

“Perhaps a brief respite is in order,” she says, floundering for some shred of dignity. “I doubt my queen would begrudge us a few hours’ delay in joining her.”

Xena studies her, eyes narrowed dangerously. “That doesn’t sound like the Boadicea I know,” she says, without kindness. “Sounds like she’s going soft in her old age.”

“I’m sure she’d say the same about you,” Gabrielle points out with a smile.

Xena opens her mouth to counter that, but she cuts herself off before anything comes out. Even now, it seems that the sight of Gabrielle is enough to silence her, to wash down her hard spirit with something a little sweeter, a little less ‘warrior princess’ and a little more of the woman Gabrielle loves. Her expression shifts, an odd kind of unease creasing her brow into a frown, and though Gabrielle knows she should resent what comes next, the cloying compassion and the needless worry, somehow she finds it’s easier to swallow now that they’re here.

Xena’s fingers are gentle when she touches Gabrielle’s face, a lingering caress with the hand that isn’t holding her upright. There’s a warm, loving familiarity in the way she pushes back her hair, but when she shifts slightly to press her palm against her forehead there’s a sudden wash of tension that makes Gabrielle want to pull back and hide her face.

“How are you feeling?”

The question is a whisper, for her ears only, and Gabrielle can tell that she’s not talking about her watery legs or sickly stomach. She takes a calming breath, struck by the lack of salt in the air, and tries to shape a response.

“We’re here,” she says at last; it’s all the answer either of them need.

Xena sighs. Gabrielle can feel the tension start to ripple through her whole body now, her arm tightening around her waist as the truth of it sinks in for her as well. She takes a moment, holding Gabrielle close, then grudgingly turns back to Andred.

“All right,” she says. “A ‘brief respite’, if that’s what you want.”

“Well, _I_ sure want one,” Amarice mutters, scowling as she loses her balance again. “What’s up with the floor in this place, anyway?”

Naturally, Xena doesn’t dignify that with a response.

*

A brief respite serves some of them better than others.

Andred leads them to a nearby tavern, a little hovel in the nearby town that boasts too many patrons and not enough staff. She’s not familiar with the area, she explains and readily admits that she can’t vouch for the quality of the place, but Xena insists that it doesn’t matter. She’s quite pointed in the way she reminds them all that they only need something to eat and drink and a chair or two to sit on, and she’s almost violently adamant that ‘brief’ is the active word and ‘respite’ is optional.

In any event they’ve certainly been to worse taverns. The food is greasy, but after days of gruel and tea it’s a feast for all four of them. Xena and the others tear happily into about six different kinds of meat, while Gabrielle works tentatively through some weak broth and tough bread. Her stomach is feeling much better now that she’s back on dry land, but she’s learned too well the benefits of taking it easy after a rough sea voyage. Simple and small is the way to go, at least for the first few hours, and it serves her well now.

They order water to drink, but Gabrielle can tell by the way Xena taps her fingers on the table that she would give her right arm for something stronger. They lock eyes when she places the order, and Gabrielle can’t help wondering whether it’s for her sake that she refrains or whether it’s because of her that she wanted the stuff in the first place. She doesn’t say anything about it either way, but she stays close to Gabrielle while they eat, keeping one hand on her arm even when they both have their mouths full, and the lines on her face get deeper as the time passes.

“How far to her camp?” she asks after a while.

Gabrielle doesn’t miss the way she doesn’t say Boadicea’s name, as though she can keep the whole situation at arms’ length so long as she keeps it vague and impersonal.

“Two, maybe three leagues,” Andred tells her. “We can make it by evening if we set a good pace.” She glances briefly at Gabrielle. “Or we can rest here for the night and depart at first light. Either is acceptable.”

Xena growls, annoyed by her apparent indifference, and perhaps a little protective. “For someone who keeps talking about how important this gods-damned fight is, you’re in no real hurry to get us there now, are you?”

Andred studies her for a long moment, as though trying to decide whether this is a hill worth dying on, then shrugs. “On the contrary,” she says. Her voice is always so hushed next to Xena’s bellowing, even when she’s saying something worth hearing. “Time is very much of the essence. I just don’t want one of your friends collapsing midway through they journey.” Tactless as she is, she doesn’t even bother pretending that she’s talking about Amarice. “My queen has told me of your methods. Ours are not the same.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Xena mutters, mostly to herself.

Andred narrows her eyes, but she doesn’t rise to the bait. “My point is, we opt to preserve stamina, even if it necessitates a delay. We don’t needlessly exhaust ourselves.”

“I don’t _needlessly_ do anything,” Xena counters hotly. “Except, apparently, take endless sea voyages to worthless little islands who can’t fight their own battles.”

She’s very angry now. Her voice and her colour are rising with her mood, and her self-control is fraying by the second. Gabrielle gulps down the mouthful of bread she was chewing, searches for something to say, some way to stem the rising tide before it swells so high that not even she can tame it. The last thing any of them needs is for Xena to lose her temper and do something they all regret.

“Xena…” she starts, and realises a moment later that the name is all she has.

Blessedly, she’s not the only one here. Amarice seems to recognise too that the situation is getting volatile, and she steps in to try before Gabrielle has a chance to embarrass herself.

“Look,” she says. “Why don’t we all just settle down and take a—”

Xena cuts her off with a warning glare. “Stay out of this, Amarice.”

“I’d love to.” She doesn’t, though, not that anyone really expected her to. Much like Gabrielle — indeed, much like Xena herself — she’s far too quick to leap without looking, and far too quick to ignore what’s good for her. “But you gotta admit she’s got a point. I mean, we’re not gonna be helping anyone if we end up killing ourselves just to get there on time. Jeez, after that freaking voyage, don’t you think Gabrielle’s been through enough?”

Gabrielle hides her face in her hands. After that ‘freaking voyage’, she’d really rather they stop drawing attention to her weaknesses at all. Not that she gets a say in this, of course; Xena is already capitalising on her name, and without a shred of sympathy.

“I think Gabrielle was the one who insisted we come out here in the first place,” she says, flat and cold.

Gabrielle understands the resentment. Amarice does not. “Didn’t we _all_ decide on that?” she asks, tentative but determined. “Well, everyone but you, I guess. But you can’t just blame her for—”

“Amarice.” The name is a warning this time: _I won’t tell you again._ “Stay out of this.”

“Indeed,” Andred says, rather too eager to side with to the woman who wants to punch her. “If the warrior princess has a problem with my methods, she’s more than welcome to voice them. I am not here to make friends, simply to bring you to Queen Boadicea unharmed.”

“And what a great job you’re doing of that,” Xena growls, and doesn’t look at Gabrielle. “Wasting time on nonsense like this when I just want to get in, get the job done, then get on the next boat back to Greece. You and Boadicea can go to—”

“Xena, _please_.” Gabrielle pushes her plate away and hauls herself up to her feet. She’s still not as strong as she wants to be, but sitting down for a while has helped a great deal. “If you want to go, let’s just go.”

Xena doesn’t even look at her. “You too, Gabrielle. Stay—”

“I’m serious.” She sighs; it’s soft, but it cuts Xena off like a blade to the throat. “It’s fine, really. I can manage. But please… Xena, _please_ stop trying to make this into something it’s not. It’s hard enough already. Don’t make it harder.”

At last, Xena turns to look at her. Her eyes are still on fire, blazing with all that rage and frustration, but it all sputters and dies the second they catch the light in Gabrielle’s. The bitterness, the resentment, the anger… all of it just bleeds out of her, leaving in its wake something so vulnerable, so utterly fragile that Gabrielle wonders for a moment if she’s seeing a reflection of her own face.

Xena never looks like that, at least not in public. Sometimes, rarely, in the privacy of their shared bedroll she’ll let a hint of it show through, a flicker of openness when she’s kissing Gabrielle’s face, but she’s never let anyone else see her like that, exposed less than perfect. Usually, once the anger reaches the surface, it takes an army to rein it back in.

Gabrielle is the one who bleeds emotion, the one who opens up her heart and her soul, who lets the world see the colour of her blood, the shades of her pain. Gabrielle is the one who throws her heart open while Xena keeps her secret places locked up tight. Seeing her turn that aside, if only for a moment, rends her right through.

“Gabrielle,” she says. It makes the world into something new, makes the tavern dissolve around them, Amarice and Andred and everything else, shrinks the whole world down until it’s just the two of them, the way it always was.

“I can’t.” The words burn in her throat, a memory of acid and fever and pain, a shadow of so many different kinds of flame. “Xena, please. I can’t fight this and you. I can’t be here and see you and do _this_. I can’t.”

Xena rests her hands on the table, clenching her fists until her knuckles turn white, until they start to tremble with the exertion, the effort of not putting them through the nearest solid object. Gabrielle recognises the heat creeping up the back of her neck, the tension in her jaw, the way she doesn’t speak; she knows how hard she’s fighting off her demons, her instincts, her temper. It’s always such a struggle for Xena to hold herself in check when she’s this angry, to hold the violence under the surface when her every instinct is screaming for her to let it out.

Xena doesn’t do anything by halves, and she never bottles up her conflicts; if it’s worth getting worked up about, then it’s worth doing, no matter the price. Sometimes Gabrielle worries that she’s pinning her down, holding her back from what she needs to do and be; other times, more often than not, she’s afraid of the things she sees in Xena’s eyes, the things she knows those white-knuckled fists can do, and then she worries far more about what would happen if she didn’t.

After a long, tense moment, Xena stands as well. Her expression is hard, eyes cold, and when she pulls her hands away from the table she doesn’t unclench her fists.

“You heard her,” she says to Andred. “Let’s go.”

*

Their progress is slow, all four of them exhausted, but at least they’re moving.

Gabrielle is still a little unsteady, footsteps heavy and uneven, but this time she doesn’t lean on Xena. She’s afraid of her anger, afraid of the conflict and the hurt she feels radiating out of her, afraid of all those frustrated feelings that she knows are all her fault. It’s hard not to feel responsible when she looks at her, knowing perfectly well that Xena would never have come back here willingly.

They are here now, though, and with no escape in sight they both feel trapped and helpless. For Gabrielle that’s pretty normal, but for Xena it’s alien and unwanted. Gabrielle has seen her like this before, and she knows that anger is her only defence, the only thing she knows she can rely on. She understands why Xena feels that way, knows exactly why she’s behaving like she is, but she is so very frightened.

It’s not really Xena’s fault. They’ve only been here a short while, and already Gabrielle feels like her skin has been stripped from her body, like her bones are exposed, her soul lashed and lost; when she’s feeling like that, it’s little wonder that Xena’s temper makes her feel unsafe. It’s a primal kind of terror, something that transcends even the love and trust they share; she wishes that it wasn’t, but it is. For now, at least, it is.

So, instead, she leans on Amarice. She might have her own frustrations to deal with, but frustration on her is toothless and tempered; she’s a wild young thing, but she is removed from all of this. She’s safe in a way that, at least for now, Xena is not.

It doesn’t hurt either that they’re much the same in this. Amarice is as wobbly as Gabrielle, unbalanced after so long at sea, and it’s a fair while before she can walk straight herself. Gabrielle draws strength from that, comfort in leaning against someone who is leaning just as desperately into her, and she can tell that Amarice is likewise relishing the chance to lend support in the same moment she receives it. It’s a kind of symbiosis, completely at odds with the awful things that stir inside of her when she looks at Xena.

“I’ve never seen her like this,” Amarice says when they’ve been walking for about an hour or two. The two of them have fallen behind a little, far enough that Gabrielle knows they’re out of earshot. “By the gods, she’s so angry.”

She sounds uncomfortable, as though a measure of Gabrielle’s apprehension is bleeding into her as well. Gabrielle feels guilty about that, and all the more so because it brings a kind of unwanted solace, the brittle kind of comfort that comes with not feeling alone, even when it’s tainted by someone else’s suffering.

“It happens,” she says, as much a reminder to herself as to Amarice. She has to remember that this is just the way Xena is, has to keep that vision of her at the front of her mind. “Xena doesn’t react to stress like us. Anger is the only thing she knows.”

Amarice hums thoughtfully, then frowns. “It’s good when you’re in a fight,” she says. “But we’re not fighting now.”

“No, we’re not,” Gabrielle says, and thinks, _not yet_.

She closes her eyes for a moment, struck by the reality of it, and her legs lose what little power they had. She stumbles, tripping over her feet like a child learning to walk for the first time, and Amarice catches her with a strength that belies her slimness. She’s frowning when Gabrielle rights herself, forcing herself to swallow her own fear, as though worried that it will make Gabrielle feel worse than she already does. It’s unsettling, and it makes Gabrielle wonder what else she blurted out in that dank, dark hold, what other secrets her fever dreams let slip.

“You okay?” Amarice asks, breathy.

Gabrielle nods, then shakes her head. Neither is really accurate.

“You’ve got to understand,” she says. “This place is a nightmare, for Xena and for me. What we went through here, together and apart…”

“Yeah, so you keep saying.” The fear is gone now, replaced by a rising impatience. “You ever gonna tell me what all that stuff means?”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to answer, but the memory strikes before she can get a word out, quick as a snake bite and just as crippling. She looks down at her hands; they’re deathly pale, but in her mind’s eye she sees them covered in blood. She remembers how it felt like something alive, some strange primordial creature slithering over her skin as the dagger went in.

She remembers how her body, too, felt like something strange, but not nearly so alive. It was utterly outside her control, like it wasn’t hers at all any more, wracked and warped by the horror of what she’d done and the worse horror of Khrafstar’s transformation. She remembers how it tore at her, the way he went from victim to victimiser, from an innocent in need of saving to the mastermind of the whole thing, from the sweet sort-of friend she’d sold her soul to protect to the thief who stole it from her. She remembers screaming and sobbing, remembers Xena and the way she held her, remembers how it didn’t matter.

She remembers Dahak’s fire, and how completely it engulfed her. The heat and the flame felt like something otherworldly, something ethereal; she remembers how it wrapped itself around her, how it licked and lapped at the skin, how it raked through her even as it never touched her. She remembers the pain, remembers the fear, remembers being held in place, helpless, unable to pull free. She _remembers_ , and she hurts.

“No…” she whispers, breathless and broken. 

It’s not an answer to the question, and Amarice knows it, but what else can she do but pretend that it is?

“Hey.” She’s whispering too, as though afraid of shattering whatever reverie has Gabrielle in its grasp. “It was just a question, okay? Just a dumb, stupid question. You don’t gotta answer. It’s okay if you don’t want to. It’s okay if you can’t. It’s _okay_.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. She wants to sob. Every part of her is reeling.

She blinks; her vision is blurry and wet. She can see Xena some distance ahead, still arguing with Andred, still embracing her anger, working through her turmoil like she always does with violent words and cruel thoughts. It’s hard to see her like that, harder still to look back down at herself and wish for a moment that she could do the same.

Gabrielle wants to go to her, to touch her, but she’s afraid of seeing her face and remembering the moment when she fell, when the flames left her alone but the pain didn’t, when the fire was gone but she still felt scorched and scalded and seared, when she hurt so much and didn’t know why. She doesn’t want to remember how she felt in that moment, doesn’t want to remember the world around her turned to smoke and rubble, doesn’t want to remember the way Xena dove through it all, the haze and the blood and the madness, doesn’t want to remember the temple crashing down around them, Xena catching her and holding her. She doesn’t want to remember that the only thing she could think in the moment Xena saved her was _why does it feel like you didn’t?_

She knows why now, but she didn’t then. Shaking, numb, a broken shell of a soul in Xena’s arms, she couldn’t understand why she still felt it. _“It hurts inside,”_ she said in a shuddering whisper, but Xena didn’t understand what she meant.

It hurt so much. _She_ hurt so much. And here they both are, hurting all over again.

She takes a moment, takes a breath, then forces herself to look at Amarice. Amarice, who wasn’t there, who won’t ever be a part of this, who is so far removed from all of it, all the hurt that happened here and all the hurt that came later. It grounds her a little, the sight of her face and the distance it brings.

“It’s all right,” she says, very softly. She’s speaking mostly to herself, but it’s Amarice’s face that relaxes. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t mean to be evasive. It’s just… it’s very hard. Being here again, remembering everything…”

“I get it,” Amarice says.

Gabrielle knows that she doesn’t. Her eyes are so bright, so eager; if she really ‘got it’, she wouldn’t look like that. She would have years on her, the light dulled to a faint glow, a lifetime of lines etched out across her face. Hers is the face of someone who pretends she knows everything because she’s too proud to admit that she knows nothing.

“No, you don’t,” Gabrielle tells her, and to her surprise Amarice nods.

“I know.” She sighs, touches the back of Gabrielle’s hand. “I don’t mean, like, I _get it_ get it. That’s your thing, yours and Xena’s and this Queen Bo-Whoever. But I get… I mean, I know what it feels like. To have something you can’t let go… to have this… this thing inside you that… it’s a part of you, and you wish it wasn’t.”

That sounds a little closer to the truth, a bridge between them, and Gabrielle exhales her agreement. She feels like so much of this is happening outside of her, like the feelings are coming from some place far away, some place she can’t see, but she’s the one living them out. She feels so wretched, as much a victim now to the visions and the memories and the clamour in her head as she was back then to Khrafstar’s manipulations, to Meridian’s sacrifice, to Dahak’s flames and his will. It makes her feel so helpless.

“Yeah,” she whispers, and again finds herself wanting to cry. “It’s hard. And I’m sorry. I wish I was—”

“No.” She blurts it out so urgently, with such aching desperation that it makes Gabrielle’s breath catch in her throat. “I mean… don’t. Please. Don’t be, like, sorry or whatever. Not for that. It’s just…” For a moment, it looks like she needs to catch her breath too, like this is as hard for her as it is for Gabrielle. “Look, uh… I know it’s not really my place or anything… I know it’s all about you and your, like, issues and all that stuff. I know I shouldn’t be saying anything. I get that. But I… this…”

She trails off, as though realising she’s over-stepping some imaginary line, eyes wide as she searches Gabrielle’s face for permission.

Gabrielle thinks about denying her that, letting the conversation die and letting Amarice’s confidence be a necessary sacrifice to spare her the grief. It’s tempting, more than she’d care to admit, but then maybe she’s come to care a little more about this wide-eyed Amazon upstart than she thought she had, because she can’t bring herself to turn her away while she looks as vulnerable Gabrielle feels.

She’s trying so hard, so desperate to reach out and connect with something she knows she has no place in, something she knows she can never understand; it goes against everything she stands for, everything she holds dear and close to her, the Amazon’s pride and the warrior’s instincts, the parts of her that look at Xena with awe and at Gabrielle with disdain and disbelief. She’s trying so hard to twist herself to a role she was never made to play, and the part of Gabrielle that once walked Eli’s path of love knows that it’s something to be cherished, something to encourage, no matter the personal pain.

Besides, Amarice has seen her at her most embarrassing now, and her most pathetic. She’s watched her hang her head over the side of a ship, stomach heaving and shame pricking behind her eyes. She’s lifted water to her mouth, helped her to drink when she was too weak to do it herself. She’s held her hand through the fever of a festering wound, a self-inflicted hurt borne of her own stubbornness. She was there through all of that, and she didn’t even blink. Surely this is no worse.

“It’s all right,” she says, softer this time. “What were you going to say?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just…” She closes her eyes for a second, visibly steadying herself. Gabrielle doesn’t tell her how much it helps, the sight of someone else struggling for once, the reminder that she’s not the only one who is. “Okay. So. I know they’re your tribe, not mine. But Ephiny…”

Gabrielle swallows hard. Here, so much more than back home, the name strikes deep, a welcome fondness filling her heart, coupled with the old familiar grief. “Ephiny.”

“Yeah.” Amarice is grimacing a little, the way she does sometimes when she finds herself feeling things too strongly. Again, Gabrielle thinks she is so much like Xena in her rare vulnerable moments. “So, uh… when she took me in, you know, she taught me some stuff. She didn’t… she didn’t ask any questions or pry or anything like that, but I guess she… well, I was kind of a mess, you know? So I guess she looked at me and figured…”

Gabrielle doesn’t ask questions either. She can see the answers clearly enough; she doesn’t need to hear them as well. Ephiny taught her too, after all, and it doesn’t take a genius to piece together the things that Amarice hasn’t said about herself, about her people and her place among them. She’s young and strong, eager to prove herself, but all she ever talks about is her tribe and how much better things were with them. Gabrielle might still be a novice when it comes to Amazon traditions, but even she knows that there are only a scant few reasons why an Amazon with such strong ties to her tribe would end up in someone else’s, and fewer still by choice.

This is an intimate pain for Amarice, Gabrielle can tell, and it means more than she can put into words. That she is not the only one opening up past pains, that she is not the only one exposed and on display, that she is not the only one who has been hurt by things she can’t let go, that she is not the only one _sharing_ these things… it’s a gift. She wonders if Amarice realises how much of one.

“Go on,” she says.

Amarice shakes her head. “It’s just… she said you can’t get over stuff if you can’t go through it. Like, it’s always gonna hurt more to think about something than to… I dunno, just deal with it. And I know… I know that you’re not like… like me or her or whatever… I know it’s different, being back here again, but if it was me… and, you know, it’s not and I get that… but if it _was_ me…”

Gabrielle shakes her head. Suddenly she doesn’t want to hear this. “Amarice…”

But it’s too late to tell her to stop now. “If it was me,” she says again, with a kind of quiet desperation, “I’d want to face it. Whatever it was. You know? I don’t think I could come back to a place like this and not try to face what it did to me.”

It takes a great deal of effort for Gabrielle to keep walking, to keep from crashing to her knees. She knew it was coming, but still the words tear straight through the heart of her, a blow she can’t shake off.

It is so much like Ephiny, she thinks sadly, to say something like that. Gabrielle remembers those dark, dreadful days after Hope killed Solan and she killed Hope, after she came so close to killing herself as well. It did no good for either of them in the end, the poison she chose, but in that moment it felt like finality, like she was coming full circle; Hope’s life began with murder, and it ended that way too. She felt so full, so gorged on death and pain and loss, on the blood she’d spilled and the blood she could have avoided.

She remembers Ephiny’s hands in hers after Xena left. She remembers the way she stayed with her, the way she tried to heal her and then, when that wasn’t enough, the way she taught her the Amazon way of dealing with griefs as deep and unmendable as this. She remembers the word, _purification_ , the way it sounded on both their tongues, the way Ephiny made it sound so sweet and when she repeated it herself, tripping over the syllables, it changed into a promise. She remembers being awestruck by the thought of cleansing herself of every awful thing she’d done.

Ephiny said the same thing then that Amarice is telling her now. As shattered as she was at the time, the details are blurry at best, but no amount of grief or pain will dull the memory of her face when she took her hands and said _“you have to face it to be free of it.”_

These things are so much easier said than done, though. Here and now, even just the thought of going back to that temple fills her with such a profound sense of dread that it almost rips the ground out from under her. The idea of seeing it again, of _being there_ again, of exposing herself willingly to the place that tore her open when she was not willing at all, makes her feel so utterly, so physically sick that for a moment she longs for the relative simplicity of being tossed about on a boat.

She leans heavily into Amarice, lets her breath catch convulsively in her throat, and marvels at the fact that she is here, having this conversation, so deep and so intimate and so unbearable… and with someone who is not Xena.

 _Xena_ , she thinks, and aches. Xena, who is still walking ahead, utterly oblivious to all of this. Xena, who is still trapped inside her own version of what happened, still playing out over and over again her own part in this twisted, painful narrative. Xena, who has always been there for her, always, except the one time she wasn’t. _Xena_ , and she is so far away, and Gabrielle is so lost, and it should be her, it should be _them_ , together, like it always is, but it’s not. Xena isn’t the one telling her all of this, and Xena isn’t the one holding her upright… and may the gods forgive her, Gabrielle doesn’t wish she was.

“It’s hard,” she hears herself confess. “It’s so hard.”

She doesn’t know which part of this she’s talking about, which of the countless fractured pieces this place left her in. It doesn’t matter, she supposes; it’s true for all of them.

Amarice holds her tightly, leans in until their foreheads touch. “I know,” she says.

Gabrielle doesn’t need to look at her to know that it’s the truth.

*

The sun is low in the sky by the time they get to Boadicea’s camp.

Andred introduces them as _‘the warrior princess and her companions’_ , as though Gabrielle and Amarice are just here for the ride, silly little footnotes that aren’t really worth mentioning. Gabrielle doesn’t mind that; she’s used to being seen that way, and experience has taught her that there are advantages to be gained from being underestimated. Besides, here and now, she wants to be as invisible as possible.

Amarice, on the other hand, gets predictably huffy about it. She folds her arms across her chest, plants her feet like a sullen teenager, and though she knows better than to complain about it in front of Xena, still it’s obvious that she doesn’t appreciate being sidelined after travelling such a long way.

Boadicea is surprisingly civil when she sees them. She’s sat with a few of her people around a crackling campfire, clad in her usual armour; even seated she cuts an intimidating figure, and when she stands to greet them she towers over everyone, even Xena. Gabrielle can’t quite tell if the raw physicality is intentional or just a by-product of her height, but it doesn’t much matter; she speaks to them like a perfect diplomat, even mustering a smile.

“Thank you,” she says to Xena, with a sincerity that bears weight.

Xena, of course, doesn’t even pretend to return the smile. “Uh huh.”

“She means ‘you’re welcome’,” Gabrielle chimes in hastily. She’s used to this too, being the polite one one while Xena scowls, and she tries not to let the rough journey show too visibly on her face. “It’s good to see you again.”

Boadicea’s expression shifts ever so slightly at the sight of her, a softness that looks painfully like pity; possibly Gabrielle isn’t as good at masking her exhaustion as she likes, or else perhaps Boadicea is simply remembering their last visit. Either way, she doesn’t mention it.

“Gabrielle,” she says, with the vagueness of someone clearly praying she’s got the right name. “Would that it were under better circumstances.”

Gabrielle doesn’t take the awkwardness personally. The last time she and Xena visited Britannia, all three of them had more important things on their minds than making friends. Xena and Boadicea were focused on Caesar, fixated to the point of obsession, and of course Gabrielle was preoccupied with Khrafstar and his spirituality. She and Boadicea didn’t even really cross paths at all until the bulk of it was over, the battle with Caesar and the nightmare at the temple, and by that point she was in such a terrible state of shock that even now she can barely recall anything at all. From the look on her face, faint recognition with a touch of pity, Boadicea only dimly remembers her as Xena’s broken little friend.

“One day,” Gabrielle says, swallowing over the bitter memories, the horror that flickers to the surface again. “One day, I hope it will be. No Romans, no…”

But she can’t finish. Her throat closes up, and suddenly she has to fight to keep from choking, from losing control right here in front of Britannia’s most formidable warrior. Xena takes her by the arm, squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise. It calms her somehow, like Amarice did before they started the journey, when she brought her back to herself with a touch of her hand against the hot, festering wound. A flash of pain, sharp and strong, and just like then she’s back where she should be.

“Gabrielle,” Xena murmurs, low and very sober.

“Right.” She shakes herself a little. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t mean to… that is… I’m…”

“It’s quite all right.” Boadicea is much softer when she talks to Gabrielle than to Xena; that makes sense, given their past, but Gabrielle can’t help wondering why everyone they meet seems to be that way. Does she really give such a weak first impression that even strangers flock to comfort her? “Xena has never been particularly fond of small talk, and frankly neither have I. There are more important things at stake here, just as there were last time.”

Xena snorts, clearly still a little skeptical. “There had better be,” she snaps, eyes locked on Boadicea like even now she expects a knife in the back. It’s strange, and more than a little upsetting, to see her baying for a fight like this. “We’ve come a long way for you, and against my better judgement. You know better than anyone how I feel about Rome.”

“From what I’ve heard, the feeling is mutual.” Boadicea’s smile doesn’t fade, but it takes on a sharp edge, the kind that Gabrielle has often seen on Xena. Small wonder the two of them clash so often; it’s like watching two reflections of the same soul sparring each other. “I’m glad to see the rumours of your untimely crucifixion were nothing more than propaganda.”

“No.” Xena’s smile is sharp too now; Gabrielle can tell that she’s enjoying this a little more than she should be. “They weren’t.”

“I… see.” Apparently Xena has won this round, because Boadicea’s smile flickers for a moment, and she frowns. She and Xena might be cut from the same warrior’s cloth, but Boadicea is not ashamed like Xena is of letting her confusion show. “What a tale that must be.”

“We’re not here to tell tales, Boadicea.”

“No, of course not.” She sighs, seeming to sense that any attempt at pleasantries will fall flat this time. “Then perhaps we should retire to my tent. We can discuss the matter more privately there, and in some measure of comfort. Your companions are welcome to join us, of course.”

The thought of spending the night discussing another war with Rome fills Gabrielle with a bone-deep exhaustion, but she masks it as best she can. She doesn’t trust Xena alone with Boadicea right now; honestly, she’s not sure she would trust her alone with anyone at all. She’s seen her like this before, her emotions so frayed, her temper so hot, and she knows that leaving her side will only wreak havoc for everyone. Xena always struggles with self-control when she’s in this sort of mood, but when Gabrielle isn’t around to temper it, she always loses it. Strained as things might be between them while they’re here, Gabrielle is still the only one who can hold her in check, at least for now. For everyone’s sake, she has to do that.

“That sounds good,” she lies.

Xena grunts, ignoring her, but Amarice finds her hand again. It doesn’t sit well inside Gabrielle that Amarice, with all the awareness of a raging bull, can see things in her that Xena can’t. Xena has always seen what she wants to see, and right now Gabrielle supposes she’s seeing the version of her she used to know, the one she needs to keep her tethered. She wants the Gabrielle who will go along with everything she says, who worships the warrior princess, who would follow her to the ends of the world. She doesn’t see the way things have shifted, the way that Gabrielle has become the one to hold Xena steady in moments like this, the way she’s as much Xena’s strength as Xena is hers; even now, even after Mavican and Ares, still she refuses to see what she can do.

That, she thinks, is almost more exhausting than the conversation ahead.

*

Boadicea’s tent is comfortable enough, but she and Xena talk for hours.

Gabrielle sits in a quiet corner with Amarice, watching and saying very little. Boadicea talks a great deal about her enemy, Suetonius; she tells Xena what she knows of his army, and the strengths and weaknesses of her own. She describes their recent battles, too, detailing more than a dozen bloody stalemates reached in various parts of the country, and uses the word _‘last stand’_ about twenty times.

It sounds very, very serious, and Gabrielle tries very hard to listen. They have a big map spread across the table and little figurines carved out of stone to mark all the key players; she’s sure it’s very useful to Xena, who is a natural strategist long accustomed to this sort of tactical thinking, but to someone like Gabrielle, who feels before she thinks, they just look like children playing with toys. Boadicea points out the nuances again and again, but Gabrielle still can’t tell one little stone figure from another.

Amarice shifts restlessly in her seat, like she’s itching to add her voice to the noise. If the look on her face is any stick to measure by, she’s not much better informed than Gabrielle is, but she’s always eager to pretend she knows what she’s talking about, and she enjoys the thrill of seeing a battle on the horizon. The little details and nuances might be lost on her, but she understands phrases like _‘kill them all’_ and _‘send them crying for their mothers’_. Perhaps a little too well, if the truth be told.

“Why is this even a thing?” she asks at one point, and Gabrielle sucks in her breath as Xena’s face floods red. “I mean, come on! You guys outnumber them by… what, three to one?”

“It’s not a matter of numbers, child.” Boadicea’s choice of the word is very deliberate, a pointed if impolite reminder that Amarice’s opinions are not needed here, and that her experience is sorely lacking next to her own. “Suetonius’s army is better equipped, better positioned and, frankly, better led.”

“Well, duh,” Amarice shoots back. “I don’t see him running to Xena, all _‘woe is me, I’m getting my butt whipped by a bunch of losers in armour’_.”

“Amarice!”

That’s Xena. She doesn’t even try to keep her voice down, and Gabrielle can see that she’s relishing the chance to let out a little of her simmering rage on an easy target. She can’t afford to lose too much of her temper with Boadicea, not when they need to present a united front for their troops, but Amarice isn’t so lucky, and her insolence is met with barely-repressed fury.

“What?” Not that it stops her, of course; like Xena, her blood is up now, and she’s in no mood to back down. “I’m just saying what you’re thinking. Look at those little Britannia people there…” She gestures at the map, at one of the groups of stone figures. “These guys should’ve stomped all over those guys by now. There’s _dozens_ more of them. But instead they’re wasting their time and energy calling on you like you’re the freaking cavalry or something. It’s lazy and stupid, and…”

It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines of this particular argument, to see that this has nothing to do with the strength of Boadicea’s army or her tactics, or anything at all. Amarice was as eager to come here as Gabrielle, after all; she was the first one to call on the greater good, and she can’t possibly be naïve enough to think that Xena will ever forget that. This isn’t about anything that’s happening right now, and everyone knows it.

Gabrielle watches them both, Amarice and Xena, but they’re not looking at each other and they’re not looking at Boadicea either. Xena glances her way occasionally, but it’s little more than a cursory shrug here and there, a wordless challenge and nothing more. They don’t care about her, and they don’t care about the map or the stone figures or any of it. They’re too busy looking at Gabrielle.

Xena’s eyes are bright with anger, lit up by the parts of her that have been endlessly insisting that they should never have come back here in the first place; Amarice’s are dark with worry, with echoes of their earlier conversations and all the times she’s watched her lose herself in memories of things she can’t share.

It makes Gabrielle feel loved, but it also makes her angry too. They’re both so violent on her behalf, so quick to jump at each other’s throats and so desperate to pretend that it’s about anything other than what it really is. She wants to hug them, and she wants to strangle them.

 _Stop this,_ she thinks, but when she tries to say it the words won’t come.

“Amarice.” Xena’s voice is steady, but Gabrielle can see the rage making her fists shake. “You’ve never set foot on a real battlefield. One little scrap between the Amazons and the Romans does not make you an expert in this.” Her jaw is trembling, face a thundercloud. “You don’t know the first thing about war.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the only one.” Amarice swings to her feet, jabs an accusing finger at Boadicea. “Apparently, neither does _she_.”

“That’s enough!” Xena roars.

She doesn’t get the chance to finish, though, or to send Amarice scurrying out of the tent with her tail between her legs like she clearly wants to. It’s Boadicea who stops it, as calm and composed as if they were discussing the weather and not throwing personal attacks right at her face. Gabrielle watches her closely, tries to take in as much of her serenity and composure as she can. At least someone in this powder keg has some measure of restraint in them, she thinks, deeply grateful.

“She’s right,” Boadicea says, quite calmly. “Let’s not stand on ceremony here, Xena. We both know I would never have sent for you if I thought for a second that I was capable of finishing this on my own.”

Xena sighs. “That’s as may be,” she says, no less annoyed at being undermined by an equal than by a nobody like Amarice. “But it’s not her place to say so.”

“ _Someone_ has to,” Amarice grumbles, sulking.

“Not you,” Xena counters sharply. “Amarice, you’re a guest here. We’re _all_ guests here. We are all of us under Boadicea’s protection, and you’d do well to remember that.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes. It takes a great deal of searching, but she finally finds her voice.

“She’s tired,” she says. It’s so simple, but it drains the life out of her to say it. “We’re all tired, Xena. Even you.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I think it is.” She hopes it is, anyway. Weary now, she looks to Boadicea, lets her see just a sliver of the roughness she’s been feeling. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s been a very long, very difficult journey. We’ve gone through a lot to get here, and I… we’re all very tired. I know you’re eager to get things started, but please, can we do this tomorrow?”

Xena deflates almost instantly, like she’s just had a bucket of icy water thrown over her hot temper. “Gabrielle…”

“It’s a fair point,” Boadicea says kindly. “Perhaps it would serve us better to pick this up in the morning. We can’t afford mistakes borne of fatigue. In any case, the gods know Suetonius’s army isn’t going anywhere. And neither is mine.”

Relieved to have someone on her side, Gabrielle turns back to Xena. “You know it makes sense,” she says softly, for her ears only. “You’re not exactly reasonable when you’re tired, you know.”

“Not true,” Xena mutters, but there’s a fond little smile on her face now just the same. “All right, fine. By the gods, you know I can’t deny you anything.” Gabrielle chokes out her relief, heavy as a sigh; Xena turns back to Boadicea with a scowl on her face. “We meet back here at first light. When we do, I expect to hear every detail of those last three battles. Understood?”

Boadicea is smiling too. For the first time, Gabrielle realises that she never really stopped. Even when she’s arguing with Xena, even when they’re shouting at each other, there’s always a strained smile on her face, a cool sort of peace, and it’s only now, struck almost dumb with the promise of a place to finally lay her head, that Gabrielle understands why it’s there.

She’s seen that smile before, she realises. It’s the smile of someone who has been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders for a very long time, so long that she’s all but forgotten how it feels to be unburdened. It’s the smile of someone who has finally, _finally_ caught a flicker of light at the end of a dark, endless night, who has finally caught the ghost of a chance against impossible odds. Xena inspires that depth of feeling often, Gabrielle knows, though it’s rare that she realises it.

“First light,” Boadicea agrees, and the relief on her face says that she will sleep well tonight for the first time in a long, long time.

Gabrielle prays that the same proves true for herself.

*


	6. Chapter 6

*

She does sleep well, at least for the most part.

They share a cramped little tent, her and Xena and Amarice. Boadicea offers something a little bigger, even suggests that they share her personal living space, but Xena laughs off the suggestion in that not-at-all-good-humoured way she has of feigning civility while telling someone to go to Tartarus. It won’t be necessary, she tells her, and points out that they’re used to sleeping in far more unpleasant conditions. Besides, they all agree that it will be enough of a luxury just to be shielded from the wind and rain for a few hours.

Small though it is, the tent serves them well enough. Amarice curls up on one side, Xena on the other, and neither one of them says a word to the other. They’re both sulking after their earlier disagreement,and neither one of them is handling it particularly graciously. Xena mutters and scowls all the while she prepares herself for sleep, and Amarice pouts like a teenager sent unfairly to her room. Gabrielle settles herself less than subtly in the space between them; it’s not the most comfortable spot she could have picked out, but if she’s lucky it will keep them from rolling over every five minutes and ‘accidentally’ kicking each other in the head.

Given how exhausted she is, it’s no surprise that she’s out cold almost before her head even hits the pillow, and no surprise either that her sleep is deep and blessedly dreamless.

The morning brings more bad weather. She wakes, groggy but rested, to an empty tent and rain drumming on the canopy. The latter doesn’t surprise her very much — it is Britannia, after all — but the former is definitely unusual; it’s rare that Xena lets her sleep in like this, and rarer still that Amarice does. No doubt they just thought she needed the extra rest after the ordeal on the ship, but that doesn’t stop her feeling just a little expendable.

Predictably, she finds them in Boadicea’s tent. Xena is hunched over the map again, Boadicea on one side and Andred on the other; Xena glances up at the sight of her, but doesn’t bother to say good morning. She’s visibly in warrior princess mode, spine bent in a clean arc and brows knotted in concentration; Gabrielle knows better than to interrupt her train of thought when she’s in this sort of a mood, and she settles herself down to listen in an unobtrusive little corner.

Amarice isn’t nearly as focused as Xena. She seldom is — few people are — but today she’s even more restless than usual. She’s pacing, as she often does when she’s bored, but she brightens at the sight of Gabrielle, like a kid anticipating a playmate. Clearly, her input is no more welcome at the war table this morning than it was last night.

“You’re up,” she says to Gabrielle, with a grin so bright it almost blinds her. “Was starting to wonder if you’d sleep the day away.”

“Tempting,” Gabrielle says with a chuckle. She’s still a little hoarse, but it’s a rested kind of rusty now, grogginess more than ill health. “So, what’s the situation?”

Xena still doesn’t look up at her. Gabrielle can’t help wondering if she’s avoiding her on purpose now. “Hard to know from here,” she says, flat and impersonal. “I want to get a closer look at Suetonius’s camp, measure their resources, see if I can figure out his strategy.” Given the way she’s talking rather more to the map than to Gabrielle, it’s not exactly a surprise when she adds, “I want you to stay here.”

“Of course you do.” Gabrielle sighs. “Xena I’m not some—”

“I know you’re not.” There’s an odd kind of tension in her voice now, the obvious impatience — _‘I don’t have time to deal with your ego right now’_ — mixed with a kind of wordless denial, like she doesn’t want to admit even to herself that her plan might be a little dangerous. “But you’re not a military strategist either. There’s nothing you can do there, and plenty you can do here.”

“I concur,” Boadicea offers, no doubt trying to play the diplomat. “I could use all the help I can get.”

She’s got a strange look on her face when she says it, but Gabrielle doesn’t get a chance to press the issue; Xena’s already rushing on, driving home her point with her usual devastating precision.

“There you go,” she says. “That’s reason enough, don’t you think?”

Gabrielle opens her mouth, then shuts it again with a sigh. “I suppose.”

“Good.” Xena still won’t look at her, of course. That would be too much to ask for. “You and Amarice—”

“Oh, no.” To absolutely no-one’s surprise, Amarice doesn’t like that one bit. “No, no, no. No way, no chance, nuh uh. You can’t pull that _‘you’re no use to me out there’_ crap on me. I’m an Amazon, remember? We’re taught how to track and fight before we’re even born.” There’s a ferocity in her eyes, a heat so much like Xena’s; with the two of them standing there together, so close to each other and to her, Gabrielle can hardly breathe. “Gabby can stay here. Sure, that makes sense. She can play healer or whatever with Boadacious and her people or whatever. But me? No way. You know I can be helpful.”

“Amarice…”

The frustration in Xena’s voice is endearing; rested and comfortable as she is for the first time in days, Gabrielle can’t quite hide the smile. It’s familiar, the tension between them, and it helps her to relax, helps her to remember that wherever they are, whatever they’re facing, they’re still _them_ , all three of them, and some things will never change about that. Her chest floods with warmth, affection for them both.

“She has a point,” she says to Xena, taking advantage of the way she’s not looking at her to wink at Amarice. “She doesn’t have the patience to run messages or fetch supplies or treat the sick and injured. You might as well ask her to spend the day standing on her head for all the good she’d do here. If you take her with you, at least she stands a chance of doing something.”

 _And with any luck,_ she thinks, _if the two of you have to work together maybe you’ll work out your differences too._

She knows better than to say that part out loud, of course, and Amarice is apparently so happy to have an ally that she doesn’t seem to notice the additional weight. “Yeah,” she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “You see? Even _she_ thinks I’d be better off going with you. And what Gabrielle wants…”

Xena does look up then, glaring at them both. “Gabrielle,” she snaps, voice tight as a whip. “You know I can’t afford to be distracted.”

“I know,” Gabrielle says, as gently as she can. “But neither can I. If you’re both together, I’ll know that you’re safe. She’ll have your back, Xena. The gods know, if you’re going into Roman territory…”

She trails off, not needing to say anything more; the way Amarice is suddenly blanching white makes the point for her. Xena, perhaps realising that there’s a weight here heavier than she first thought, lets the fight bleed out of her for both their sakes.

Mustering her dignity, she turns to roll her eyes at Amarice. “You’ll do as I say,” she snaps; it’s not a question. “No helpful little ‘suggestions’, no unsolicited advice, none of that _‘in my tribe’_ nonsense.”

“Sure, if that’s what you want.” She grins. She can’t seem to help herself. “I mean, if you want to do it _wrong_.”

Though a part of her was expecting it, Gabrielle groans. “Amarice, didn’t they teach you how to take a victory in your tribe?”

“Yeah: with both hands.”

“Or, alternatively, like this…” She turns to face Xena, puts on her most irresistible smile. “Thank you, Xena.”

Amarice rolls her eyes. “Sure. Uh huh. Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Xena huffs, scowling at them both. “Just don’t make me regret it.”

The threat is a futile one, of course. Anyone can see that she already does.

*

They leave after the mid-morning meal, and are gone for most of the afternoon.

Boadicea stays behind to work with her people, but she sends Andred and a couple of others in her stead. Xena insists that it’s unnecessary, that she and Amarice are more than equipped to handle any complications that might arise and that they both have more than their share of experience with Romans, but Boadicea is apparently more stubborn even than Xena because she doesn’t even flinch when she tries to stare her down.

“My camp, my rules,” she says, and apparently there’s some kind of hidden warning in there, some throwback to their chequered history, because Xena backs down right away and doesn’t say another word about it.

For her part, Gabrielle does what she’s told without comment or argument. She’s never been the kind to kick up a fuss without a good reason, and she understands in a way that Xena never quite does that simple, menial tasks can be just as rewarding as grand sweeping gestures. She is obedient, eager to help, and she knows the difference such a thing can make in a camp full of frightened would-be soldiers.

Boadicea was right when she said that there’s no shortage of things to do. Gabrielle isn’t picky; she’s just as happy sharpening swords or running messages as she is treating the sick and injured or gathering supplies. It’s mindless work, simple and safe, and it surprises her to find how effectively it helps to keep her focus where it should be, far away from the things that still haunt her when she stops to catch her breath. It does her more good than she would ever admit, limiting herself to easy tasks and situations where lives aren’t at stake. She feels better, healthy in a way she hasn’t in days, but only for as long as she’s got something to do.

She’s taking a short break, warming her hands over a rain-soaked, miserable-looking fire and trying not to let her thoughts catch up with the rest of her, when Boadicea sits down next to her.

“I trust my people are treating you well?” she says, without preamble.

Gabrielle nods, and doesn’t let herself feel daunted by the sharpness. She’s used to this sort of no-nonsense straight talk from Xena, especially when she has more important things than pleasantries on her mind. None of them are here for conversation; they’re here to fight and to defeat a formidable opponent. The rest can wait until the Romans are back in Rome.

“They’re very focused,” she says, because she knows that’s a compliment to a leader. “And very loyal.”

“Too loyal, perhaps,” Boadicea says darkly.

Gabrielle can tell that it’s not self-deprecation making her say it, that she’s genuinely worried about such a thing. It’s always the way, great leaders wondering why others can see the greatness they never notice in themselves, too close to their own reflection to see the striking figure that others know at a glance. Xena has never had that trouble — she’s well aware of her own strengths, and the price that comes with them — but Gabrielle has seen others doubt themselves like Boadicea is; she’s seen formidable, even terrifying warriors lose their nerve in critical moments, and it never ends well.

“They’re not the only ones,” she says softly, a feint at cold comfort. “Xena thinks a great deal of you.”

It’s a dangerous, loaded statement, and she knows it, but Boadicea doesn’t even blink. “I doubt that’s true,” she says. “From my experience, Xena doesn’t think much of anyone.”

She doesn’t sound bitter or resentful, not like she was the last time they were here, but there’s still an underlying hint of _something_ in the way she speaks that cuts the wrong way against Gabrielle’s heart. It makes her feel very strange, shaky and sad in a way that she knows is wrong. She’s very aware of the fact that this has nothing to do with her, that the Xena Boadicea remembers is not the Xena that Gabrielle knows now. She understands that, just as Xena herself understood it the last time they were here, but still there’s something in the way Boadicea’s eyes catch the cloudy half-light that makes the words burn dangerously hot.

“She’s changed,” Gabrielle says. “She’s not the woman who betrayed you. She hasn’t been for a very long time.”

“I’m quite aware of that.” There’s authority in Boadicea’s voice, but no edge. “I wouldn’t have sent for her if I wasn’t.”

Gabrielle sighs. That doesn’t make it easier, she knows, but she’s not sure what she can do to change that. “She’s here to help,” she says weakly, and wonders why that never seems to be enough. “We all are.”

It works, if only to a small extent. “You’re right, of course,” Boadicea muses, as apologetic as she can afford to be in a place where her people might hear. “It’s ungrateful of me to wallow in my own prejudices when you’ve come all this way.”

“I understand,” Gabrielle says, and doesn’t add that Xena probably wouldn’t.

“In any event,” Boadicea presses on, ignoring her, “if Xena’s talents come through and help my people to see Suetonius off for good, I’ll be in her debt for the rest of my days. So I suppose I’d best get used to swallowing my pride.”

“I don’t think she wants that,” Gabrielle says. “I don’t think it’s really about… you know, your history. It’s just… this isn’t easy for her. Coming back to Britannia, fighting Romans again…”

She doesn’t say that it’s not easy for her either; that part isn’t important to anyone.

“We’ve heard the strangest tales about that,” Boadicea tells her, referring to the Romans. She doesn’t elucidate, but she doesn’t have to; she’s already confirmed that the story of Xena’s crucifixion has reached Britannia’s shores. “I shan’t pry, of course. It’s not my business. But you should know that my relief is sincere. Xena and I may not be friends any more, but I admit I shed a tear when I heard…”

She trails off, but the damage is done. Gabrielle swallows hard, remembering in gruesome detail her own part in Xena’s crucifixion. The soldiers she slaughtered, the blood on her blade and her hands and her body… and then the crosses, the nails, the pain and the impossible calm when it was over, when she was hanging, when _they_ were hanging together. _At least I’ll die with you,_ she thought. _At least we’ll be together_.

“Yeah,” she manages; she sounds very, very small. “Yeah, uh…”

She shakes her head, shakes off the unwelcome thoughts. This place already carries enough pain, enough bad memories to last her a dozen lifetimes; the last thing she needs is to reawaken another. She has made her peace with her own death, if not with Xena’s, and though it still haunts her sometimes to remember how much it hurt, Xena has taught her well enough to understand that there’s nothing she can do about it. Dwelling on it will only end in more pain, a different kind but just as deadly, and none of them can afford that here.

“My apologies,” Boadicea says, because apparently Gabrielle lacks Xena’s talent for keeping her conflicts on the inside. “It wasn’t my intention to dredge up unpleasant memories…”

“No.” She tries to clear her throat; suddenly, it’s very dry. “No, you didn’t. I mean, you did. A bit. It’s just…” She forces a little smile, tries desperately to make light of it. The old, dead Gabrielle would have. “Well, those nails _hurt_.”

It’s a casual dismissal, but it’s also the truth, a reminder to herself as much as Boadicea that that’s all it was. A little pain, a little death, but nothing they couldn’t overcome.

Boadicea studies her for a long moment. Gabrielle halfway expects her to blurt out some awkward, mumbled sympathies; that’s what they usually get when they run across someone who knows the story. Uncomfortable as it always is, she supposes she can understand the impulse. After all, what do you say to two people who have died in the most horrible way and then come back to life? There’s nothing that even touches it, really, so people tend to just settle for _‘oh dear, I’m so sorry’_. It’s fumbling, but the intention is pure.

Xena rarely sees the humour in that sort of thing. Blessedly for her own sanity, Gabrielle does. She understands better than she wants to, just how difficult it can be to talk to someone who’s been through something so far beyond imagination. She understands that halting words are better than none, as much for the one who gives them as the one who doesn’t want to hear them.

Boadicea doesn’t say anything like that, though. She doesn’t tell Gabrielle how sorry she is, and she doesn’t lament how horrible it must have been to get nailed to a cross by your worst enemy. In fact, she says nothing more about it at all; she may well be the first person Gabrielle has ever met who said _“I shan’t pry”_ and seemed to genuinely mean it.

Instead, changing the subject completely, she says, “You’re not very much like her.”

It takes Gabrielle a few seconds to realise what she’s talking about. “Xena?”

Boadicea nods. “I can’t imagine, of course, what the two of you have been through of late, but somehow I can’t see _her_ ever being so open about it. Even if we were still as close as we once… as I _thought_ we once were, she’s never been the type to share her feelings. Opinions, most certainly, and in great detail, but feelings?” She shakes her head, smiling with the distance that comes with years of healing. “Not on your life.”

It’s true, and it makes Gabrielle smile. “She’s getting better at it,” she says. “With me, anyway. But it still doesn’t come naturally to her. Not like…”

_Not like it does to me._

The thought comes easily enough, but it freezes in her chest before she can get it out. It doesn’t feel like the truth any more, at least not in the way it once did.

Once, so long ago now that she’s all but forgotten how it felt, she would have opened up her heart and her soul and every part of her without a thought. If she was in pain, she would gladly tell the world; why keep it inside when the wound is there and open and everyone can see it anyway? She used to own her struggles and her weaknesses, nurture them inside herself and radiate them out in all directions, keep them always on display so people wouldn’t have to cut her open to find them. It felt safer somehow.

It doesn’t feel that way any more, and it’s been a long time since she laid herself so completely bare, and so much without thinking. Now she hides festering wounds from her friends, from the people who care about her, from the woman she claims to love. Now she spends entire sea voyages shivering in the hold and pretending she’s just fine. Now she lets her voice trail off when she thinks about the things that hurt; now lets her sentences die before they finish, even when she knows she’s in a safe place. Where she once would have shaped epic poems out of her experiences, now she turns her face away and prays that people don’t ask her where she’s been.

Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, she was a bard. The world was forged in words, in imagery and metaphor and colourful turns of phrase; beauty was in the telling of it, and she never felt more alive than when she shared the things she felt. Even the darkest moments became precious stories, her deepest secrets spilled across crackling parchment in the dead of night while Xena slept an arm’s length away. There was no pain so great that she couldn’t craft it into a story, and in a way those stories became her survival; if she could create something beautiful from her suffering, maybe there was some purpose to it after all. So long as she could turn her pain into poetry, it didn’t feel so bad.

Somewhere along the line she lost that, and now she is so much changed that she can hardly even remember how that kind of freedom must have felt. It’s so hard now to look inside herself and pull her feelings apart, to turn her pain into reflection and reshape it into something beautiful. It’s so hard to do what once came so naturally, to expose her heart and bare her soul, to throw herself open the way she always has, the way Xena never does. Not so long ago they were worlds apart; now it feels like they’re dangerously close.

She doesn’t realise that her eyes are closed, that she’s let the world dissolve around her, until Boadicea lays a hand on her arm and she blinks herself back to awareness.

There’s an odd look on her face when it comes back into focus, fixed and thoughtful and very, very serious; it’s obvious that she’s already moved on to something new, shrugged off the conversation as though it were nothing at all. That makes sense, Gabrielle supposes; Boadicea doesn’t have the luxury she does of dwelling inside her own head for hours on end. She has an army to feed and water and clothe, people to keep warm and healthy and in one piece; she can’t afford to sit around navel-gazing like this.

“Gabrielle.”

There’s a new kind of confidence in the way she says her name this time, and she pitches her voice very low. Years with Xena have taught Gabrielle to recognise the shift, and she knows without having to hear it said that she’s about to broach something deeply private.

“Hm?” she asks, trying not to sound too curious.

“I was wondering if I might ask a favour of you.”

Something in her tone makes Gabrielle feel deeply uncomfortable, foreboding like an itch under the skin, but she doesn’t let it show. “That’s what I’m here for,” she says, trying to be cool.

“I certainly hope so.” It’s not meant ironically, Gabrielle can tell, and the weight in her voice makes it clear that this is not one of her menial message-running or sword-sharpening errands. She touches her belt, and Gabrielle notices for the first time the myriad pouches and containers she keeps hanging there. “This is a… well, I suppose you could call it a ‘delicate matter’.”

Gabrielle swallows hard, then nods. What else can she do? “That’s all right.”

Boadicea is studying her again, eyes narrowed as though searching for weaknesses. “Good,” she says after a moment. “Given your familiarity with Rome and its methods, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have no intention of letting anyone under my command be taken by their forces. However the battle plays out, whatever its outcome may be, I will not hand my people over to _that_.”

Gabrielle looks down at her palms, at the faded scars where the nails went in. “I don’t blame you,” she says in a whisper.

She doesn’t need to look up to know that Boadicea is looking at the same place, as though she herself went through her own kind of crucifixion.

“Good,” she says again, harder this time. “Then I trust that you’ll understand the need to put certain… contingencies… in place.”

That sounds ominous. Gabrielle echoes the sentiment with a dry mouth. “Contingencies?”

“You heard me.” She’s deadly serious now, leaning in with no awareness of personal space and keeping her voice as low as she can. “I’m not a fool, Gabrielle. I know that I can’t guarantee my people’s safety through the struggles to come, but I’ll be damned to whatever afterlife you’d care to name before I let them hang on crosses like…”

Gabrielle bites the inside of her cheek. “Like…?”

“Ah.” She has the good graces to look abashed. “Well. Figure of speech, you understand. We’re a little freer with our metaphors here than your lot back in Greece.”

Gabrielle snorts, but doesn’t bother to counter. The look on Boadicea’s face is achingly familiar; she’s seen it on Xena’s many, many times. It’s the look of a leader forced to make a difficult decision with a potentially devastating price. Gabrielle flatters herself that she alone in all the world has seen just how heavily these kinds of decisions weigh on Xena. No-one else has seen the consequences; no-one else has held her in the silent, scream-strangled nights that stretch out afterwards.

It puts her in a unique position to recognise the same thing in Boadicea, and to shrug off her momentary lapse. If she can glean a little levity from an ill-chosen turn of phrase, so be it. Gabrielle knows words even more intimately than she knows pain, even now, and she knows better than anyone the depth of comfort they can bring. She would never deny someone a chance for that, and certainly not someone who reminds her so much of Xena.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asks, sounding stronger than she feels.

Boadicea takes a deep breath, steadying herself, then draws one of the pouches from her belt. She hands it over without saying a word, the contents clinking ominously, and Gabrielle doesn’t need to look inside to know what she’ll find there. It strikes her like a blow, and without needing to hear another word she knows exactly why Boadicea is asking this of her and not of Xena. It sets off a churning in her stomach, a hammering in her chest, and a pounding in her head. It makes her think of things she wishes she could forget.

“A choice,” Boadicea says. It’s the only explanation she’s going to offer, and the only one Gabrielle needs. “Theirs to make, should the need arise.”

Her voice is steady, soldier-strong, but when Gabrielle looks up and finds her face she sees the torment there behind her eyes. She feels faint, wracked by her own memory, but for Boadicea’s sake she doesn’t let it show.

“Poison,” she chokes.

Boadicea nods. “Wouldn’t you choose such a thing over crucifixion?” It’s not a challenge, Gabrielle can tell; it’s a serious question, and one she desperately needs to hear answered. “Or slavery? Or any of the hundred or thousand things those bastards do to their captives? Wouldn’t you choose to end it at your own hand than throw yourself on the mercy of a nation that knows none?”

It’s the first time she’s raised her voice since they arrived, and it rends Gabrielle straight through, dredging the memories against her will.

Again, she remembers being fastened to the cross. She remembers the pain of the nails as they went in, so much worse in her feet than her hands, remembers biting her lip as it happened, remembers tasting the blood in her mouth even as she watched it pour over her skin. It was so bitter, she thought at the time, and bit down again and again so she wouldn’t scream. She had to keep quiet for Xena, she remembers. She had to make sure that Xena knew she was all right, had to make her believe that she would survive, that they both would. Even as the life bled out of them, pulses of pain in rhythm with the rush of blood, she had to make Xena see that she was strong.

It’s not just the crucifixion she remembers this time, though. She remembers _poison_ too.

She remembers a waterskin in her hands, and in Hope’s. She remembers looking down at her with tears in her eyes, holding her close as she died. _My daughter,_ she thought, and _how can she be a monster when she doesn’t even know what she’s drinking?_

She remembers conjuring up Solan’s face, the echo of Xena’s anguished screams. That was her fault; she was responsible, and she knew what she had to do. She remembers looking into Hope’s face as she covered her body, and praying that she would find peace; she remembers looking down at the skin, and realising that she could end it if she wanted. A swallow or two, and it would be over, gone forever just like her. She remembers holding the idea in her head, holding the skin in her hands…

She wanted so badly to drink, to end it. The pain, the guilt, the horror of what had happened, what _she_ had done. She wanted to lie with her daughter, to drink and drown and die for their sins. She wanted it to be _over_ , but she was so, so afraid.

“Yes,” she whispers, shaking herself before she can start shaking.

When her thoughts clear themselves, when she’s finally able to look up and remember where she is — and, more importantly, where she is _not_ — Boadicea is staring at her again. She seems to understand in that way that only a seasoned warrior truly can that there is something deeper here than what she sees on the surface, and knows in a way that only a true leader can that it’s not her place to question or judge, or even to wonder. She has an army to lead, a war to win, and she can’t allow herself to get caught up in a near-stranger’s heartache. Still, though, she allows it, a moment that neither of them can afford.

“Good,” she says after a beat or two, eyes locked on Gabrielle’s hands.

Gabrielle licks her lips. She wonders what this poison tastes like. “Yes,” she says again, and this time it’s an affirmation.

Boadicea nods. “I want you to distribute it among my people,” she says, voice heavy with authority now; the moment, such as it was, is over now. “Explain what it’s for. Be certain that they understand it’s a last resort for an outcome I pray we never see. Be _certain_ that they _understand_.”

“I will,” Gabrielle promises, feeling suspended.

She wonders if Boadicea has any idea just how perfect a choice she is for this task.

*

She does as she’s told, trying desperately not to think too hard.

It’s devastating, the countless different reactions she sees in countless different faces. Some nod, sober and steady, quick to understand the cost of what they’re doing, the price that might have to be paid so that others might be free; others blanch deathly pale, seemingly struck for the first time by the truth of what might lie ahead, the harsh reality of war and the darkness of the evil they’re fighting. Some slump with relief, grateful for a chance to take their lives into their own hands; others shake their heads and refuse, insisting that they will hold out hope until their dying breath, that any Roman torture is preferable to surrender.

Gabrielle doesn’t need to wonder what she would do in their place. She’s been on both sides. The first, broken and lost with the poison almost touching her lips, so desperate to put an end to it all; the second, biting back screams with nails in her hands and feet and the wood cold and wet against her back. She’s felt every breath as the life bleeds out of her, an agony beyond measure, and she’s poured the poison onto the ground, throwing her arms wide open for a worse one. She doesn’t need to wonder what sort of decision she would make if either of those moments came upon her again. 

She knows better than to share any of that, though. Everyone deserves the right to choose for themselves; that Gabrielle has learned enough to make her choice simple is her burden, not theirs.

By the time the job is done she’s feeling worse than raw, pulled apart in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time. Ever since she made the decision to come back here she’s been trying so hard to be strong, to to look beyond the coming war and what it inevitably means for good people, but faced with so many of them now, compelled to show them how to take their life to pre-empt someone else taking it from them, she finds herself fractured and sore in her soul. She feels like she’s been thrown from a ship, seasick and staggering, and into the open sea; she’s so out of balance with herself, but she won’t get to drown until her body wears itself out.

It’s shortly after that, just as she’s trying to still her trembling hands, that Xena and Amarice come back.

She doesn’t need to ask how it went to know that the answer is ‘badly’; the sight of them tells her everything she needs to know. Xena’s step is uncharacteristically unsteady as she approaches, her jaw white and her skin stained with blood; it’s not her own, Gabrielle can see, but for once that doesn’t offer much comfort. Amarice is cleaner, but she’s also visibly shaken; she trails along behind Xena, leaving a couple of steps between them, and the look on her face is haunted and anxious.

Gabrielle knows both of them very well by now. She doesn’t need them to tell her what happened — a fight, probably closer to a massacre — and she definitely doesn’t need to hear the words to know that it wasn’t the Romans who started it this time.

“Xena,” she whispers, not wanting to hear it confirmed. “What—”

“Amarice.” She doesn’t even acknowledge Gabrielle at all. Her eyes are locked on the horizon, her voice heavy as stone. “Find Boadicea and report to her. Don’t leave anything out. Not a detail, not a word. She has to know what we’re dealing with.”

Amarice bows her head, visibly shaken. “But what about—”

“You heard me.” She doesn’t look at either of them. “Go.”

Amarice opens her mouth for about half a second, then closes it. She does what she’s told without another word, scurrying away on wobbly legs as though the hounds of Hades are chasing after her. Gabrielle watches her go, feeling her heart leap into her mouth. She’s never seen Amarice obey anyone so quickly, even Xena, and certainly not without a complaint or a witty comeback.

She turns to Xena as soon as it’s just the two of them. She’s shaken as well, and she hasn’t even heard the words yet. “What did you do?”

“Culled their numbers,” Xena says, quite simply. She takes Gabrielle by the arm, fingers locking like iron over the muscle. “Come here.”

Not that she would resist even if she could, but Gabrielle doesn’t exactly have a choice. Xena is forceful, relentless in the way she gets sometimes after a heated battle, when she’s not quite regained control of herself; she doesn’t wait for Gabrielle to follow of her own accord, simply hauls her away like a disobedient pet or dead weight. Gabrielle is used to moments like this by now, the intensity and the ferocity that surge up in her when she’s done something she regrets, and it’s no real surprise when she turns on her heels and drags her away from the camp.

She walks very fast, and doesn’t stop until they’re way beyond the camp’s bounds, safely hidden among the neighbouring trees.

“Xena,” Gabrielle blurts out when they come to a stop, but Xena doesn’t let her get any further.

“Shh,” she hisses, a command not a comfort, and kisses her.

It’s a powerful kiss, bruise-hard and more than a little violent, but it’s nothing they haven’t done before. Gabrielle closes her eyes and lets it happen, lets her legs go out from under her, lets Xena drive her backwards, back and back and _back_ until her shoulders hit a tree, until it and Xena’s strength are the only things keeping her upright.

Xena is rough, not just in the kiss but in everything she does, edging violence even in the way she shoves her body against up her. She often does this sort of thing after a fight, giving but not allowing Gabrielle to give back; she holds her tight, teeth sharp against her lips, tongue hot and hungry. She seems so rabid, so out of control, but when Gabrielle gasps and groans under her she pulls back without hesitation.

“Xena…” Gabrielle whispers again. She’s breathless now; they both are. “ _Xena_.”

“I did what I had to do,” Xena tells her.

Gabrielle hasn’t challenged her, hasn’t even mentioned it yet, but already she’s trying to defend herself. From experience, Gabrielle knows that usually means the reverse is true; the harder she tries to justify her actions, the more unjustifiable they tend to be. Still, though, she nods, because that’s what this is really about.

“I know,” she says. She has to understand. Xena is begging her to understand. “I know you did.”

It’s not enough. Somehow, she knew it wouldn’t be. “Boadicea was right, Gabrielle,” Xena grits out. It’s hard to pay attention when she’s licking the words up the side of her throat. “It doesn’t matter that we have the numbers on our side. They have the _talent_. Someone needed to cull them. I—”

“You did what you had to do,” Gabrielle says. Her mouth tastes of Xena; her body can’t decide whether it wants more or wants to run away. “I know that, Xena. You always do.”

“Yes.” It sounds like praise. “Good.”

She leans in again, breathing hard against her lips. Gabrielle knows where this is going, where moments like this always go, and she pre-empts Xena’s wild abandon with a kiss of her own.

It’s easier on them both sometimes, when she takes the lead. She’s never truly in charge, could never be that sort of a person, but it helps them both to pretend that she is, that Xena doesn’t have to be. It’s a gift for both of them; for Gabrielle it makes her feel powerful in a way she so rarely gets to be when their clothes are on, and for Xena it’s a reminder that Gabrielle will always be there to temper her, that she will never, ever let her lose herself.

It’s Xena who pulls away, lips kiss-swollen and very wet. She’s staring at Gabrielle with a wild kind of passion, like a hunter or a beast. Normally that look makes Gabrielle blush and stammer, makes the heat rise on her neck and flood to other places, but today it leaves her cold. It’s hard to think about intimacy with her soul as broken as it is right now; it’s hard to find pleasure in Xena’s body or her own when she’s spent half the afternoon handing out poison to an outmatched army, offering them death and remembering worse.

She opens her mouth to speak — she doesn’t know what she wants to say, really, only that she needs to say _something_ — but Xena silences her with a look before she can get a word out. She has one hand at the back of Gabrielle’s neck, the other reaching down to take her by the wrist, and Gabrielle is almost relieved when the power balance shifts again, when the illusion of control is taken out of her hands.

Xena’s mouth falls open for a moment, her breath harsh and laboured, and then she’s pulling Gabrielle close, turning her hand over until their joined fingers find the burnished bronze of her breastplate. She covers Gabrielle’s knuckles with her palm, tracing the contours, the curves, the lines of her body as she slides them lower, and bares her teeth.

“Oh,” Gabrielle says. They don’t usually do it this way. “Oh, you…”

“ _You_ ,” Xena counters, voice as hot as her breath. “Gabrielle, _please_.”

It’s very rare that she does that. She isn’t begging — even that word isn’t begging when it comes from Xena — but the urgency in her is bordering desperation, a kind of vulnerability that Gabrielle almost never gets to see; she’s never doubted how deep Xena’s love for her is, has never questioned how much she means to her, but even now, even after so long, she knows how hard it is for Xena to show this side of her, the place where she’s willing to lean on someone else, to ask for what she needs. She’s never truly begged, will probably never do that even with Gabrielle, but when she presses Gabrielle’s hand against her sternum, it’s not a command.

Gabrielle sighs, head falling back against the tree, relief flooding her as she touches Xena, as Xena presses into her and shudders against her and does not touch her in return. “Yes,” she hears herself gasp, and trembles at the silence in her own body.

The breastplate is off in a heartbeat, clattering to the ground; the leather left in its wake is supple and yielding, the opposite of the skin and muscle underneath. It’s often kind of annoying, the way Xena insists on keeping it on in moments like this — _“who knows what could sneak up on us?”_ — but right now the extra barrier is almost welcome and in spite of herself Gabrielle is relieved. She doesn’t want to say that her heart isn’t in it this time, and she definitely doesn’t want to admit that her head is still in places it shouldn’t be, but it’s the truth. Hard though she tries, she’s never been able to force down her dark thoughts the way Xena does, or shut off the bad feelings by twisting her body into pleasure.

Xena’s hand finds hers again, and there’s a kind of roughness in the way she pulls her in again and presses her fingers to her body, tight against the leather. She’s not guiding her this time, she’s pushing and pressing and driving her, demanding in a way she wasn’t just a moment ago. Gabrielle buries her face in Xena’s neck, closes her eyes, and lets her fingers trace the familiar path by instinct and muscle memory. _For you,_ she thinks, breathing in Xena’s skin, and wonders why she feels ashamed.

The need in Xena is obvious, but it’s not infectious like it usually is. Gabrielle can feel it tightening her body as her hand slides lower, as her fingers catch the edge of her skirt. Xena lets go of her hand when she gets there, leaving her to do this by herself; she wraps her arms around Gabrielle’s back instead, holding her close and pressing against her. Gabrielle doesn’t resist, doesn’t complain; she keeps her hand moving, and holds Xena’s hip with the other.

The tree bark is rough against her back, a scratch of pain to the places where she’s still recovering from her altercations with Mavican. She thinks of turning them around, pressing Xena to the tree and bearing down on her instead, but she doesn’t; it might be easier for her, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about _Xena_ , about pulling her through the guilt of whatever she’s done. It’s the same thing it’s always been, even if it is more layered here in Britannia, and so Gabrielle shuts off her own discomfort and focuses on the task at hand, drawing Xena’s skirt up and tracking fingerprints across her thighs.

“Gabrielle.” Xena’s hips lift, inviting and demanding in equal measure. “Gabrielle, _yes_.”

Her smallclothes are already damp, clinging and sticking to the skin. Breathing hard against her throat, Gabrielle slides her fingers underneath, finding Xena slick and waiting. She holds the contact for a moment, feeling it out, and doesn’t move at all. She expects it to excite her, the heat and the wetness and the want, the way Xena’s breathing changes and the way it stops, but it doesn’t. She feels hollow inside, cold in the same places where Xena is so hot; she’s never felt so far away in a moment so intimate.

“Yes,” she echoes, numb and lost. She licks the sweat from Xena’s neck, and for a moment she’s sure that she can taste poison.

Xena keeps one hand at the small of her back, keeping her close while she rocks against her; the other pulls away, climbs up the space between them and finds the curve of Gabrielle’s arm. It’s her good arm, the one that healed long ago, and Gabrielle doesn’t feel anything but the bite of blunt nails when Xena squeezes her bicep. Her grip is vice-tight, as hard as iron, but her mouth is open and her eyes are closed and for a moment it feels less like she’s holding on to Gabrielle and more like she’s trying to ground herself.

“Strong,” she gasps, and the reverence in the word makes Gabrielle’s breath hitch for the first time. “By the gods, Gabrielle, when did you get so strong?”

 _I’ve always been strong,_ Gabrielle thinks. _You’re the only one who didn’t see it._

She works the rest of her hand under Xena’s smallclothes, finds the wet heat with her palm. “Someone has to protect you,” she mumbles, without seduction. “You’re so busy protecting everyone else.”

“I don’t care about anyone else,” Xena says. Gabrielle knows that’s not really true; she’s in the moment, talking about here and now and _this_ , but it still stings to see her so dismissive. “Just you, Gabrielle. Only you.”

Gabrielle bites her lip, sensitive and kiss-bruised, and tries not to think. “What do you want?” she asks, pressing up with her palm.

“ _You_.” Xena squeezes her arm again. Gabrielle bites down against the contact; she hates that it makes her shudder, hates that it happens for all the wrong reasons. “Gods, Gabrielle. All of you.”

It’s not figurative, Gabrielle knows. She’s asked for this before, usually in her darkest moments, and she always means it literally. She likes that sort of thing when she’s feeling like this, enjoys pushing Gabrielle past the limits of what she thinks she can do, enjoys pushing her own body past its limits as well. Gabrielle once wondered out loud if she does it as a kind of punishment, if perhaps Xena wants to suffer too in the aftermath of spilling too much blood, of taking lives she shouldn’t have; Xena kissed her soft and slow when she asked that, and made love to her with such tenderness that by the time it was over Gabrielle had forgotten that she’d ever asked the question, much less that Xena never answered.

Gabrielle wets her lips, blinking rapidly. She’s never as comfortable with this as Xena is. “Are you sure?”

Xena kisses her again, but it’s neither soft nor slow. “Show me,” she groans against her lips. “Show me how strong you are.”

Gabrielle wishes it was that simple.

She tries to take it slow, to make each movement into a tether for them both, to ground Xena in herself, in the two of them, in being together like this, to replace what she’s done with what they’re doing now. She tries to make it mean something because if their positions were reversed she knows that’s what she would have wanted.

Xena isn’t like that, though, and every time Gabrielle tries to make it easier she takes her by the wrist and drives her in deeper or higher. She grits out _“harder”_ when Gabrielle eases back, grunts _“rougher”_ when she tries to soothe the sting of the stretch, growls _“stronger”_ when Gabrielle tries to be tender.

Gabrielle is strong. Physically, at least, she knows she is. Xena is too, of course — even on a bad day she’s not the kind of person who would be easily hurt, even by something like this — but that’s not the point. Gabrielle is aware enough of her own strength to know that she could do some real damage, even to Xena, if she let herself get carried away. She is always aware of this, keenly conscious of the things inside her that could so easily get out of control if she let them.

She doesn’t want to hurt Xena. She could never want to hurt Xena. This time, though, it seems that Xena wants to be hurt. Specifically, it seems like she wants _Gabrielle_ to hurt her, to stretch her beyond the familiar limit, to leave marks she can’t forget. She wants a reminder for them both that they are together, that neither one of them acts alone. Her eyes are dark when they meet Gabrielle’s, the usual passion and heat and need coloured by something deeper, something desperate.

 _Show me how strong you are,_ she says without words. _Show me that you’re strong enough to hurt someone who deserves it._

That’s not what Gabrielle wants. She doesn’t want any of this, and least of all right now. Xena is the one gasping and hitching her hips, spreading herself wide to take in all of her; Xena is the one being pushed and pressed, taken and filled and driven to her limits, but Gabrielle is the one who feels it. She’s the one who feels like she’s being stretched and pulled open, the one who feels like there’s something inside too big for her body to hold.

Xena doesn’t groan or suck in her breath, doesn’t let on that there’s anything painful in this. Maybe she knows that Gabrielle would stop if she did, or maybe it really doesn’t hurt after all. She doesn’t let Gabrielle hold back like she wants to — she never does when she’s feeling like this — but there is no tension in her at all when she takes her whole hand, and when she does groan or gasp it’s with pleasure and nothing else.

She’s close, Gabrielle can tell, when she leans forward to choke against her ear, “How’s your shoulder?”

The question comes out of nowhere, or so it seems. In light of what they’re doing, Gabrielle has all but forgotten the wound ever existed, much less that it was bad enough to leave her sweating and feverish.

“It’s better,” she says; it might not be the whole truth, but it’s true right now.

She’s about to ask why Xena wants to know, why that’s important, but as always Xena shows her before she gets the chance to ask. As soon as she gets the answer she wanted, she finds the curve between Gabrielle’s shoulder and throat, presses a wet kiss to the skin, then _bites_.

Gabrielle cries out. Xena doesn’t, but of course she doesn’t need to; the spasms around Gabrielle’s hand say it all.

When it’s over, when she pulls out and pulls away, it’s Gabrielle who slumps back, who braces herself against the tree and slide down to the ground. She feels boneless, close to broken and close to tears, like she’s just been through an ordeal, something so much more pain than pleasure. Xena looks sated and smug, no different to the countless other times she’s asked or told Gabrielle to take her like this. She never reacts to the things that happen inside her body, never shows any sign of strain or discomfort, and her teeth always leave marks in Gabrielle’s shoulder.

Gabrielle turns her face away. She’s never felt ashamed of their lovemaking before, no matter what turns it takes, but the strange feeling inside her now is achingly close to that. Her fingers are always wet like this, but they never tremble the way they are right now.

Xena crouches at her side. She didn’t even need a moment to recover.

“Hey,” she says; her voice is ragged, hoarse even though she never cried out. “Gabrielle…”

She punctuates the name with contact; her fingers are sure and steady, much stronger than Gabrielle’s as they trace the lines of her ribs, her stomach, her hips. Gabrielle closes her eyes for a moment, struggles against herself to keep from pulling away. She wants to want this, she really does. She wants so badly to feel even just a hint of the urgency that filled Xena a moment ago, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel excited, and the only thing she wants is to run away and hide. She feels like she’s the one who was taken, but there was nothing satisfying in it at all.

“Don’t.”

Her fingers clamp around Xena’s wrist, stopping her before she can go any lower, before she can slip under her skirts and find nothing there. She doesn’t even realise which hand she’s using until the sunlight catches the wetness, and it shimmers on both their skin. _Xena,_ she thinks, and doesn’t know why it makes her want to cry.

Xena’s staring at her with lidded eyes, flushed with and heavy. “Hm?”

“I mean…” She swallows. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to.” Xena’s voice is husky. She doesn’t understand. Why doesn’t she understand? “Gabrielle, you’re so strong.”

“Xena.” She tries to stand, but she can’t do that either. So much for strength, she thinks bitterly. “I’m not strong enough for _this_.”

“Oh,” Xena says, and stops.

It’s the strangest feeling. Xena has never, ever done to Gabrielle what Gabrielle just did to her. She gets carried away sometimes, drives in a little deeper than Gabrielle is used to or presses down a little too hard, but she’s never pushed her limits they way she does her own. She knows where the lines are, and for all the countless ways she’ll cross them inside herself she has never, ever crossed them with Gabrielle.

Xena likes to be taken hard; Gabrielle knows that there’s a measure of truth to her self-punishment theory, even if Xena won’t ever admit it aloud, but that’s as far as it ever goes. When it comes to turning things around, to taking Gabrielle in turn, she becomes something completely different, reverent and tender and so full of love. When she touches her, she treats it like a kind of worship. No matter what she’s like, no matter how primal or violent or angry she is, she keeps Gabrielle apart from it, safe and protected and _loved_.

Gabrielle is not afraid of the Xena who demands to be taken, who bruises her wrist when she asks for _“all of you”_. She’s not afraid of the desperate Xena, the Xena who wants things harder, rougher, stronger. That Xena is not the one who takes her, who touches her, who loves her. Gabrielle is not afraid.

She simply… does not want this.

The thought shakes her like an ocean. So simple, but so brutal at the same time. She is broken and bruised inside, and her soul is shattered and shaken and struggling. She is trapped here on the island that violated her, and she does not want this.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I…”

“No.” Xena’s voice is a whisper too, choked and strained in a way that she seldom reaches even in her darkest moments. “Never be sorry. You hear me? Not for this. Don’t you ever, _ever_ apologise for this. Not ever.”

“Are you disappointed?” Gabrielle asks, and thinks _I wish I could explain._

“Never,” Xena says again. The heat and the passion are long gone now, and only the love is left. “You could never disappoint me, Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. She feels bruised and beaten. “I love you. I do. I…”

“Shh,” Xena says. The light hasn’t changed at all, but her eyes are bright now as she pulls away and swings to her feet. “It’s all right.”

 _It’s not,_ Gabrielle thinks. _I wish it was, but it’s not._

She doesn’t say it, though. Whatever Xena might say about it not being possible, she doesn’t want to disappoint her.

The air is cold around her now, and vast without Xena’s body to make it seem small. Gabrielle pulls her knees to her chest, fills the space as best she can, and hugs herself until the tremors stop. She didn’t even realise she was shaking, but when it ends it feels like the whole world has come to a stop all around her, as though the air itself has stilled and grown calm. She feels like she’s naked even though she never took her clothes off, even though Xena never touched her underneath them. She feels like the world is covering her, and it is so, so heavy.

“I need a moment,” she says, and prays that Xena understands.

She does. Blessedly, this time she does. “I’ll meet you back at camp.”

Gabrielle nods and presses her face to her knees.

She doesn’t cry, even when she knows she’s alone. She can’t, no more than she could have forced her body to feel what Xena’s did. She just sits there and lets the feelings overwhelm her, lets them crash over her head like the waves back on the ship, like the pulses of fever when her wound was bad, like the worst moments of her worst journeys, like so many things that are so tame next to the thing she doesn’t want to think about, the thing she feels when she looks around herself and remembers where she is.

She is strong. She knows that she is. She reaches into her boots, finds the handles of her sai, and holds on tight. Her grip is just as firm as Xena’s was when she squeezed her arm, just as fierce and just as powerful. Holding them like that, fingers wet and trembling, she finds herself again. She remembers what she can do, what she’s become, who she is.

Alone, she remembers how strong she truly is.

It’s only when Xena touches her that she forgets.

*


	7. Chapter 7

*

By the time she drags herself back to camp, it’s getting late.

The sky is heavy, weighted down by clouds so Gabrielle can’t really tell what the time is, but it’s dark enough that she can make out each of the campfires with startling clarity, the air crisp enough that she can watch the smoke rise. She meanders for a while, weaving from one fire to another, not really sure where to go or what to do.

She feels adrift, lost and almost lonely, and it’s only when she passes by Boadicea’s tent and hears raised voices — hers and Xena’s — that she realises she doesn’t have the strength to face either one of them right now. She can’t bear to see Xena like this, angry and frustrated, and she doesn’t want to see Boadicea and remember her face when they spoke about poison. She definitely doesn’t want to know what they’re arguing about this time.

Blessedly, her conscience doesn’t get a chance to convince her that she needs to make an appearance. She hovers outside for a few minutes, awkwardly wringing her hands, and she’s just about to dig down and summon what little is left of her strength when she hears her own name shouted out from a short way away.

She turns around, smothering the relief as best she can. “Amarice?”

“Hey!” She’s looking much better than she did when she and Xena returned from their mission. Her step is steady now as she trots over to Gabrielle’s side, and the smile on her face seems at least mostly genuine. “You okay? You were all missing-in-action for, like, hours.”

“I don’t think it was hours,” Gabrielle counters in a low mumble; she’s not sure whether she’s affronted or ashamed, and frankly she doesn’t want to feel either.

“Uh, _yeah_ , it was.” Amarice gestures at the darkening sky. “Figured you’d come back with Xena… but there she was and there you weren’t, so…” She sobers a little, thrusting herself into Gabrielle’s personal space to look her over. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Gabrielle says, but she doesn’t bother trying to hide the fatigue. Strange, she thinks, how being weak isn’t so shameful in front of Amarice. “I just needed to catch my breath.”

It’s about as tactful a way of putting it as she can think of, and it has the desired effect. Amarice wrinkles her nose, then sputters a laugh. “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet.” She leans in, conspiratorial, and her smile turns sharp. “This place is a real drag, if you know what I mean.”

Gabrielle chuckles wanly, and lets her eyes slide shut. Moments like this are a painful reminder of just how young Amarice is, and how young she herself was the last time she came here. Innocence is in such short supply on this island, and Gabrielle doesn’t know whether she wants to chase Amarice away from here, back to Greece where she knows she’ll be safe, or just wrap her in her arms and hold her until they both feel better.

The frown on Amarice’s face when she looks around the camp is one of someone who doesn’t really understand why the men and women are so angry, why their faces are so pinched and drawn, why they don’t seem to notice the bad weather or the mud on their boots or the rust on their swords. She thinks every battle is as simple as the careful ones the Amazons pick for themselves, the calculated cut-and-thrust of life among a well-known and formidable people.

Things are so simple for Amarice, and she can’t quite fathom the idea that it might be more complicated for other people. Life is an adventure, death a distant impossibility, and she finds it frustrating beyond words when the rest of the world doesn’t bow to what she thinks is the smart way of doing things. She thinks she knows everything, and she thinks that every problem in the world would be solved if everyone else just started thinking like her.

Gabrielle remembers being exactly that cocky the last time she was here. She felt exactly the same way that Amarice does now, eager and excited and ready to turn the world around with her ideals. She thought things were simple too, but the lessons this island taught her left lesions that she can’t ignore or escape. She feels them inside of her, brands burned into the skin; they shift and tug when she moves, and sear her lungs when she tries to breathe.

She prays, silent and sad, that Amarice will never have to learn those lessons. She prays that she at least will leave this island with her innocence intact.

“What’s going on in there?” she asks, cocking her head at the tent. She’s fairly sure she doesn’t want to know the answer, but she needs the distraction. “They sound upset.”

“Xena is,” Amarice says. Her face says far more than the words do. “She found out Bodacious has been telling her people to kill themselves or something if the Romans get hold of them.”

“Oh.” All of a sudden, Gabrielle’s throat is very dry, and she can’t seem to keep her hands still. “I, uh… I assume she doesn’t approve of her methods?”

Amarice stares at her, aghast. “Well, duh,” she says. “What kind of question is that? Do _you_?”

 _Yes,_ Gabrielle thinks. _By the gods, yes._

She doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to burden Amarice with something more complex than the black-and-white morality of life and death that she sees when she looks around this place. She is so much like Xena in that; they both share the feeling that it is better to endure than to die, that any amount of pain can be overcome with enough herbs or enough time or enough of whatever they think a body or a soul needs to survive. The only death they can comprehend is one on the battlefield, with swords in their hands and their voices raised, be it quick and painless or long and brutal. Defiance before surrender, every time.

Gabrielle has never really felt that way. Even before she knew what real suffering was, even before she learned the hard way how much pain a person could feel, even before she was able to calculate exactly how much it would take to make them drink poison, she never flattered herself that she would be strong enough to endure the kind of things that Xena and Amarice want. She’s aware of her shortcomings, the things she doesn’t want Xena to know about, the things she covers up with muscle and melee and maturity. It’s come so hard, at such a cost, and she doesn’t know whether to adore or resent them for never having known such weakness as hers, for not being able to understand how it feels.

It makes it harder, but it makes it easier too. Looking at Amarice now, seeing that stubborn arrogance, the tight-jawed certainty that she knows everything there is to know about the world and how it works, it’s a comfort and a blow at the same time; Amarice, if the gods are kind, will never endure the things this island did to Gabrielle, the things it made her do to Xena, the terrible choices and far worse, far-reaching consequences of what happened here. She still remembers the look on Hope’s face as she drank and died, and she still remembers the sickening moment when she realised she wanted to join her.

She didn’t have the strength to drink then, didn’t have the courage to die even when all she could think of was how she deserved it. She was so afraid; in the moment it mattered, she was too afraid. She wasn’t strong back then but she is now, and if the moment came again she knows that she wouldn’t hesitate.

“There are worse things,” she whispers, tears burning behind her eyes. It’s not exactly an answer to Amarice’s question, but it’s as close to the truth as she trusts herself to offer. She has to make this about Rome, not about herself; with some effort, she replaces the memory of Hope with memories of Caesar’s cross, the blood and the pain and the height. “I’ve been killed by Romans before, Amarice.”

“Well, sure, but—”

“It takes hours. Did you know that?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “It takes _forever_ , Amarice. And it’s _agony_. If I had the choice to make it quick, to make it painless…” It’s hard not to think of Boadicea’s people, of the myriad responses she got when she handed out the poison. “There are worse things than choosing to die on your own terms.”

“You gotta be kidding,” Amarice mutters, but the argument dies on her lips when she catches Gabrielle’s eye and sees the ghosts still alive in there. Idealism is one thing, but Gabrielle knows entirely too well that it balks in the face of experience. “I mean, uh… yeah, I know what you and Xena went through, with that whole crucifixion mess. I was there too, you know? Saw it, anyway. I remember what you looked like… what you both…”

She trails off. Gabrielle thinks about reaching for her hand, but she doesn’t trust her own to keep from shaking. “Amarice.”

“Yeah.” She sounds sad, but it’s only for a moment, and then the youthful exuberance, the passion for rebellion flares up in her again. “But it’s not… I mean, I know it’s _bad_ , but you can’t seriously be okay with this. We’re talking about—”

“I know what we’re talking about.”

“Well, then! Surely you… I mean, you can’t really think…”

Gabrielle closes her eyes. She sees Hope’s face again, not the one that mirrored her own but the one she wore when she was a child, when she manipulated her into believing in innocence, in goodness and kindness and compassion. Before she died and was born again to wear her mother’s face, before the two of them leaped into a lava pit, before she died a second and then a third time with her own child in her arms… before all of that, she was just a child. She was _Gabrielle’s_ child. And Gabrielle killed her.

“Amarice.” She says it with compassion, but Amarice still scowls. “Be thankful that you don’t understand this stuff, okay?”

Amarice rolls her eyes. She wants to argue, Gabrielle can tell, but she doesn’t. She has to see how deep this runs, how personal it is; she would never back down otherwise.

“Fine,” she mutters. “Whatever. But I still think it’s stupid.”

“Of course it’s stupid,” Gabrielle says, so quietly it hurts. “It’s a war.”

*

Xena and Boadicea join them for the evening meal.

They’re clearly still angry at each other, and there’s no mistaking the tension seething between them, but at least they’re mature enough to put it behind them in public. Gabrielle knows entirely too well by now that Xena can be every bit as petulant as Amarice when she wants to be, but she would never let her personal resentments get in the way of a mission that depends on cooperation. Apparently Boadicea feels the same way, because she treats all three of them with the same hospitality she’s shown since they arrived. Neither of them soften, but at least they’re civil to each other when it matters; no-one can ask for more.

Gabrielle doesn’t eat much. It’s difficult to hold on to her appetite here, and all the more so after the day she’s had. Her head is full of poison and death, her mouth sour with the taste of Xena’s kisses. It doesn’t help, either, that there are reminders of both of those things everywhere she looks. She can’t look at Xena, sat next to her, without remembering the way she clenched around her hand; she can’t look at Boadicea, sat on the other side of the fire, without remembering the look on her face when she told her about the poison. She can’t lift her head and look at the campfires and the men and women huddled around them without remembering that they’re still here on this gods-forsaken island, where she lost so much more than her blood innocence.

Xena must notice the way she’s picking at her food, the way she’s distant and uncharacteristically quiet, but she doesn’t mention it; she doesn’t say anything to Gabrielle at all. She’s quite deliberate about that, keeping a close eye on her, studying her every move with a hand close to her side without ever saying a word. Gabrielle wonders if she’s still thinking about earlier, if she’s licking her wounds at the perceived rejection or simply trying to respect her need for personal space in this place that is so hard for them both. Not that it matters; either way, Gabrielle is grateful for her silence.

Amarice stays close too, but she doesn’t stare like Xena does. She doesn’t talk much either, and she keeps her eyes downcast, like she’s lost inside her own thoughts. She’s probably still a little annoyed that Gabrielle used the words _‘you don’t understand’_ , and perhaps still somewhat shaken by what she and Xena did during their scouting mission. Gabrielle never got the details from either of them, and she doesn’t really want to know any more than she’s figured out for herself; she’s familiar enough with Xena’s methods and her feelings for Rome to piece the story together without all the gory details. Xena knows how wars like this are fought; she wouldn’t have turned down an opening if she saw it, no matter how brutal the outcome. Amarice had no idea what she was signing up for when she fell in love with Xena’s warrior instincts.

They separate after the meal is over. Xena storms off into their tent, muttering something about running through stratagems and battle plans in peace and quiet, and Amarice scurries away with what little is left of the food, no doubt to salt it for later or else pass it around to the nearby soldiers. Gabrielle thinks about offering to help, but she doesn’t have the stamina for any more unwanted conversations. She stays where she is, warming her hands over the fire and trying not to lose herself in it.

Boadicea stays with her, thoughtful and quiet. She doesn’t speak at all for a very long time, and when she finally does all she has to say is “Thank you.”

Gabrielle doesn’t need to ask what for. “I understand,” she murmurs, almost more to herself than to Boadicea. “Xena doesn’t. I don’t think she could, really, even if she wanted to. She’s too much of a warrior.”

“I’m a warrior as well,” Boadicea reminds her, without confrontation.

“You’re a leader,” Gabrielle counters. “You think of your people before you think of your goal. Xena… she’s learning how to be that way, but it’s still hard for her. She’s so different from people like us.” She doesn’t mean _‘us’_ , of course; she means _‘me’._ “We don’t think the way she does, and she doesn’t feel the way we do.”

Boadicea concedes the point with a grimace. “I suppose you’re right about that. She certainly didn’t care about my people when she stole them from me.” She catches herself before she can grow too bitter about the past, and shakes off the thought. “Still, for all their brutality, her methods are effective. We need them, and we need her, and for all that she and I don’t see eye to eye I don’t regret asking for her help. Not for a moment.”

Gabrielle sighs. She wishes she could say the same thing about herself. She was so vocal, so adamant that this was the right thing to do. Far more than Boadicea and her messenger, she is the reason Xena agreed to this. Just as she always does, Xena bowed to Gabrielle’s unshakeable faith in right and wrong; they’ve been together for years now, and she can no more deny her anything now than she could that first day she refused to be sent back home to Poteidaia. Xena is helpless when Gabrielle wants something, even when she knows they’ll both regret it.

She does regret it. But then, at the same time, she doesn’t. She can’t, not when she looks around at the people who live here, the people willing to die in this battle. She’s never been able to turn away from souls in need, even when saving theirs shatters her own. She hurts all over, heartsick and soul-sore, but even now, feeling as bad as she does, it’s hard to turn away from what she knows is the right thing. It was when she talked Xena into it, and it still is now. All the pain in the world doesn’t change that.

“I’m sure Xena feels the same way,” she says softly. “She’ll win this for you.”

Boadicea doesn’t say anything for a long time; Gabrielle thinks she sees a shadow pass across her face, but neither of them mention it, and the moment passes before she can catch it.

They both stare into the fire for a time, both lost in their own thoughts. Gabrielle thinks of Xena, of the heat and the passion in her when she came back after her mission, of the intensity and the violence and the way she wanted to be taken. She knows what it means, knows that it’s about so much more than whatever blood she might have shed; it’s the fact that it was _Roman_ blood, the fact that she shed it _here_ , the fact that she could save the whole of Britannia from its fate and still have failed in all the things that matter to her.

“Gabrielle,” Boadicea says; it comes out of nowhere, sudden and sharp and cutting through her thoughts like a chakram.

Gabrielle doesn’t look up. “I do understand,” she says, very quietly.

“I know you do.” Boadicea leans in, lowers her face until Gabrielle has no choice but to lift hers and meet her gaze. “And I understand as well. I know how difficult this must be for you.”

“I don’t…” Gabrielle sighs; she’s too tired to feign strength tonight. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here to help.”

“No.” Her voice is very strong, a leader’s voice. Gabrielle has heard Xena’s voice rise like this only a handful of times in all the years they’ve known each other, and it always comes with a great effort. “ _Xena_ is here to help. _You_ are here because you’d follow her to the ends of the world. You’re here for the same reason you were here last time.”

That strikes hard, a blade between the ribs, sharp nails raking down her back. Gabrielle closes her eyes for a long moment, reminds herself that she has changed, that she has grown, that she is not the naïve girl who suffered here before.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” she manages, but she sounds so small she doubts she could convince anyone.

Whether she believes it or not, Boadicea plays the diplomat and pretends that she does. “No, I suppose it’s not.” She sighs. “You’re a strange match for Xena. No doubt about it. But you’re a good one. I doubt she would’ve come back here if not for you.”

That’s true enough, and Gabrielle doesn’t bother to deny it for modesty’s sake. “Maybe,” she says, and shrugs. “But it doesn’t really matter why she came, does it? She’s here now. We’re both here.”

“Yes.” It feels like an interruption, though Gabrielle didn’t have anything more to say. “And perhaps that’s unfair as well.”

Gabrielle doesn’t need to ask what that means. She is so used to the pity she finds on her face, the unwanted sympathy and cloying compassion. “You don’t think I should be,” she says flatly.

“I think…” Boadicea hums, thoughtful; she’s clearly searching for the most tactful way of saying _‘that’s right’_. Gabrielle wants to tell her not to bother. “I think you’re a hard worker. I think you’re diligent and caring, and the value of those things cannot be understated right now. I think my people appreciate the time you spend with them, and I think they’re grateful to have someone who understands their feelings and their fears. I think you and I both know that Xena would never have done the things you did today.” She almost smiles. Almost. “I also think you don’t need me to tell you any of that.”

“No, I don’t.” Gabrielle breathes in deeply, and turns away from the fire. This isn’t about what she did today, she knows; it’s about what she’ll do tomorrow. “Did Xena tell you what happened last time?”

“I know enough of that particular story,” Boadicea says, somewhat evasively. “And I know enough from my own experience to know that you’ll take it to your grave if you leave again without revisiting the place that’s haunting you.”

It’s not the first time Gabrielle has heard that, but it strikes like a blow this time as well. Amarice said exactly the same thing yesterday, a quiet aside when they were on their way here; she and Boadicea are worlds apart in every possible way, but the look in Boadicea’s eyes now is identical to the one she saw in Amarice yesterday. Amarice spoke with the voice of youth, echoing words that Ephiny had told her; Boadicea speaks with the voice of wisdom and experience. The voices might be different, but the words are the same, and they resonate.

She remembers being floored by the idea when Amarice said it — _“I don’t think I could come back to a place like this and not try to face what it did to me”_ — and she remembers how it felt to think of Ephiny and know that she would have said the same thing. She remembers the rush of warmth she felt looking into Amarice’s face when she said _“I know,”_ remembers thinking that Ephiny did so well in taking her in and teaching her; Amarice might have very little wisdom of her own, but Ephiny had so much, and it’s a credit to them both that she passed it along, that some part of her will live on even now.

Boadicea is no Amazon. There are no Amazons in Britannia, at least none that Gabrielle knows of, but there is an aura so much like Ephiny’s in the way Boadicea looks at her now, in the way she echoes the same hard-to-hear sentiments. There is so much in her strength and her leadership that makes Gabrielle think of Ephiny’s tribe, the tribe she still trembles to call _hers_. Everywhere she looks, she sees a ghost of her old friend telling her to be an Amazon, to be brave and strong, to be the woman she wishes Xena would see.

“I’m here to help,” she says to Boadicea, clinging to the words and driving back the feeling. “I’m here to help you and Xena and whoever else needs me. You’re fighting a war. I’m here to help you win. Whatever I’m feeling, whatever this place does to me… it doesn’t matter. It’s not why I’m here.”

“Maybe it’s not,” Boadicea points out softly. “But it still has teeth.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She wants so desperately to believe it’s the truth, though she knows that she’s not convincing Boadicea any more than she can convince herself. “I’m stronger now. I’m… by the gods, I’m strong enough.” The words make her remember Xena’s hands on her skin, though, and the way she turned her down. _“I’m not strong enough for this,”_ she said, and remembering that now sends a tremor through her voice, distorts it almost beyond recognition. “I’m strong enough, Boadicea. I have to be strong enough.”

Boadicea leans in. She’s close enough that she could touch her now, if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. Gabrielle thinks of Xena’s hands, and trembles.

“No.” The word is a whisper, hallowed but hollow. “No, you don’t.”

*

She lets the idea settle inside of her for a while.

It’s not pleasant. It seethes, churning and twisting, like dark clouds gathering on the horizon, promising violence and rain. She feels like she’s back out on the ocean, the waves surging and dropping away underneath her, like the ground isn’t steady and she can’t trust her body to hold itself together, and she is reminded again of how terrifying it is to be completely at the mercy of something so much outside of herself.

The more she thinks of it, the hotter the idea burns, the more dangerous it becomes. It’s a sharp thing, the serrated edge of a knife made for torture, a makeshift projectile lodged in her shoulder and Mavican’s grim smile. It has teeth, just like Boadicea said, and it writhes like a nightmare, like sweating and shivering at the same time, a dread so profound that by the time it’s sat in her for an hour or two the thought of letting it out seems like almost less of a torment than letting it stay there.

 _“You have to face it to be free of it,”_ Ephiny said.

 _“If it was me,”_ Amarice said, “ _I’d want to face it.”_

 _“You don’t have to be strong enough,”_ Boadicea said.

They’re right, of course, all three of them. It’s just hard to look to that horizon and see the storms waiting there.

*

She takes it to Amarice before she takes it to Xena.

That’s the wrong way round, and she knows it, but what else can she do when Xena is so angry, so untethered? Xena is always hard, and she loves Gabrielle with a ferocity that is frightening here in Britannia. She doesn’t mean for it to be that way, but it is, and there’s nothing Gabrielle can do to stifle the feeling that surges in her when Xena has that heat and intensity on her face. She can’t shake the memory of teeth tearing into her shoulder, of muscles spasming around her hand, of the way she tried to reciprocate before she’d even caught her breath. Xena is fighting her own demons here, and they’re far more violent than Gabrielle’s.

Amarice isn’t fighting anything. Like always, she’ll fight whatever comes at her, as readily as if it were all a game.

It’s definitely not a game, but Gabrielle feels safer with someone who doesn’t understand anything than someone who knows it all.

“I want you to come with me,” she says, and doesn’t elucidate.

Amarice frowns. She’s obviously confused, but she knows better than to ask. It takes her a long, long moment to piece together what Gabrielle’s asking her, what she’s saying, to think back and remember that they did have this conversation, that she was the first one to suggest that Gabrielle face her memories here. Before Boadicea said the same thing, before Xena wanted to see her strength, Amarice was the one who touched her and saw what she was feeling, who recognised before anyone else that sooner or later she would have to do this.

It felt like a revelation at the time. To Gabrielle it’s as much of one now, but to Amarice it’s a half-forgotten conversation she had what feels like a lifetime ago. Little wonder that it takes her a while to catch up.

Her eyes go wide when it hits her. “… _oh_.”

Gabrielle stares down at her boots. She doesn’t know why she feels so embarrassed, so much like this is something to be ashamed of. If their positions were reversed, she knows that she would be encouraging this, but it’s always so much harder when she’s the one struggling.

“Yeah,” she mumbles, and doesn’t look up. “Yeah, I… you were right. I have to face it.”

Amarice swallows nervously. It’s a heavy sound, louder than it should be, as though she’s trying to figure out where this is all coming from. That’s understandable, Gabrielle supposes; Amarice wasn’t there when Boadicea spoke to her, and it’s been a long while since she brought it up. From her perspective, it must seem like a bolt from the blue.

“Okay,” she says, very slowly. “That’s… uh… I mean, that’s… you wanna… like, _now_?”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle is still studying her boots, taking strength from the weight of her sai. “Yeah. Uh… yeah.”

When she dares to look up, she finds Amarice staring at her. She’s got an odd look on her face now; the frown isn’t quite gone, but it’s softer somehow, like she’s afraid of hurting either one of them if she says too much or too soon, like she realises how fragile this moment is, how fragile Gabrielle feels as well.

“You sure?” she asks, very quietly. “You know you don’t have to, right? Like, it was just a suggestion or whatever. You don’t have to… if you don’t… if it’s too…”

She really cares, Gabrielle realises, and her heart floods at the sight of her. How far they’ve come from the angry young Amazon and the wilful pacifist. “I know,” she says. “But you were right.”

“Huh.” Amarice musters a laugh, but it sounds as shaky as Gabrielle feels. “That’s gotta be a first.”

“Probably,” Gabrielle says, then swiftly sobers. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. If you’d rather stay here, that’s—”

“No!” She blurts it out seemingly before she even realises she’s thinking it. Her eyes go saucer-wide at the sound of her own voice, and she claps a hand over her mouth. “I mean, maybe? I dunno. Uh…” She swallows, shakes her head. “You sure you… I mean, you sure it’s _me_ you want? Like, what about Xena?”

“Xena’s busy,” Gabrielle says, quite simply. “She’s needed here. Apparently I’m not.”

It’s true, of course, but she doesn’t expect for a second that Amarice will believe it’s really about that. If she truly wanted Xena, she could wait until the fight is over, until Suetonius and his people are dead and Boadicea and hers are victorious, until Xena isn’t needed here any more, until they’re ready to go home. She could, but she doesn’t want to. It’s no coincidence, she suspects, that Boadicea has chosen _now_ to suggest this.

Amarice is frowning again. She catches Gabrielle by the wrist, holds her lightly. “You’re needed,” she whispers.

“Not here,” Gabrielle says. “Not right now, at least. And you…”

“Yeah.” She snorts, attempting self-deprecation, though it doesn’t really work. “I guess I’m more trouble than help, huh?”

“Not to me,” Gabrielle says.

She thinks of Xena, of all the ways she can’t bear to be close to her, all the way their intimacy burns too hot in this place, like her skin is cracking and burning underneath her hands. She thinks of Amarice, of the way she always sees these things, the way she recognises what Xena still refuses to see in her. She feels so severed, cut off from everything that once made sense, everything that was once so simple and beautiful.

She looks at Xena and sees the shadows of what Britannia did to her, to them. She looks at Amarice and sees a fragment of the person she used to be, the light that shone inside of her before grief and experience snuffed so much of it out. It warms her to see that a light like that can still exist; leaning in close enough to touch, to let her fingers catch in Amarice’s hair, here in the place where she needs it the most, it warms her.

Amarice doesn’t move away when Gabrielle shifts closer. She just says, “ _Gabrielle_ ,” like the name makes her ache.

Gabrielle pulls back just a little. “It’s complicated,” she admits. “It’s very complicated. But I do want you. And not just because Xena’s busy fighting a war.”

“But _why_?” She sounds so confused. “I mean, I got your back if you want me to. You know I got that. But I don’t… you and me, we’re not really…”

“Aren’t we?” Gabrielle asks. She’s very serious. “Amarice, you’ve been so good for me the last few days. Xena… she hasn’t.”

“She hasn’t?” The question comes out like a whimper. “ _Xena_?”

“It’s complicated,” Gabrielle says again. She really can’t stress that part enough. “You’ve seen what she’s been like since we got here. She’s so angry all the time, so full of hate. She hates this island, hates the Romans… I’m pretty sure she’s got herself halfway convinced that she hates Boadicea as well, for being the one who brought us here. And I… I’ve been with her for a very long time now. I’ve seen her like this before. I know what she’s like, and I know why she has to be that way, but I… _here_ …”

“You got your own monsters to fight,” Amarice offers, very quietly.

“I do.” It feels so much like weakness, admitting that out loud. Gabrielle bows her head. “You should have seen her after you got back this afternoon,” she whispers, shivering. “It’s like she was possessed.”

“Well, if you’d’ve seen those Roman bas—”

“Amarice.” She takes a deep breath, more for her own sake than to soften the blow. “It doesn’t matter why. I understand why. But I… I’m supposed to be the one who can pull her back when she gets like this. I’m supposed to be the one who helps her to find herself again when it happens. I’m supposed to be her source. But I can’t be that when I feel like this.”

“Aw, Gab.” Amarice sighs. “You can’t do stuff like this for her. You know that right? You gotta do it for you. If you do it for her, it’s just…”

“I know,” Gabrielle says, so softly. “I’m doing it for both of us. We’ve both carried the ghosts of this place long enough. We both deserve to leave here cleaner than we came.”

Finally, the frown falls off Amarice’s face; the smile that replaces it is brighter than the setting sun. “You sound like Ephiny.”

“I want to do right by her,” Gabrielle says. It’s only once the words are out that she realises just how true they are, how much it means to her to think of her absent friend, to imagine her smiling down, full of love and pride. “You know that she’d tell me the same thing you did, the same thing Boadicea did.”

“Maybe,” Amarice says, though they both know there’s no ‘maybe’ about it. “But it’s not about her, Gabrielle. Or me, or Boadicea or…”

“I know,” Gabrielle says. “But you’re right. All three of you. I need to go back there. I need to know that temple has no power over me, or…” She doesn’t even realise she’s balled her hands into fists until she glances down and sees them trembling. “I need to know that it can’t hurt me any more.”

Amarice stares at her. She still doesn’t touch her, though Gabrielle can tell that holding back is more and more of an effort with every passing second.

“Yeah,” she manages at last, breathless and a little awed. “Yeah, I guess you do.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” Gabrielle tells her again, because it’s important. Amarice has to know that it’s her choice to endure this pain as well. “It’s not going to be fun. It’s going to be…” She sighs; in truth, she doesn’t know what it’s going to be. All she knows is that it’s going to hurt. “If you’d rather stay here and help Xena and Boadicea win this war, you know I’ll understand.”

For a moment or two, Amarice looks sorely tempted. Gabrielle can’t really blame her for that; the coming battle promises a great deal of bloodshed and plenty of opportunities for violence, the kind that she knows Amarice thrives on. She’d be shocked if she wasn’t at least partly tempted to stick around in hopes of a taste.

Certainly, she herself would have felt the same pull back when she first started travelling with Xena, lit up with the hope of becoming a great warrior, of proving herself in an historic moment, of the look in Xena’s eye when she saw it. _Maybe this time I’ll show her what I can do. Maybe this time I’ll get to save her for a change. Maybe this time…_

It won’t happen, though. Gabrielle learned that lesson the hard way, and Amarice is slowly coming to realise it as well. Warriors like Xena, leaders like Boadicea and Ephiny… on the rare occasions that they do need help, it’s always from people in much higher places than them, warriors and leaders in their own right. The sidekicks never save the day, and maybe it’s better that way; being a hero means making difficult choices, and Gabrielle learned a long time ago that she is not good at that. Even now, as strong as she’s finally becoming, she thinks too much with her heart. Amarice, for all her bravado, is much the same way. They’re not the kind of people Xena or Boadicea could depend on in a make-or-break moment. They’re the ones who’d make it harder.

“Xena does need all the help she can get,” Amarice murmurs, seemingly to herself, as though trying to convince herself to take the easy way out. “You know, she nearly took an arrow to the face because she was too busy trying to stab all those Romans in theirs. I don’t wanna know what trouble she’d get in if you and me weren’t there to keep her out of it.” She looks hopeful for a second, a little sad. “You sure you gotta do this right now?”

Gabrielle thinks about that. The simple answer is _‘no’_. The harder one…

“I’m sure,” she says, and only realises in that moment how true it is, how deep this runs. “If I don’t do it now, Xena will insist on coming along. And I can’t… that can’t…”

She shakes her head. The weight of it washes over her, ice water in her veins. It’s strange, looking down on herself and seeing, perhaps for the first time, just how important it is that she do this alone, that she keep Xena far away from it. It’s not just that she wants Amarice, she realises with a flash of guilt that almost cripples her; it’s that she _doesn’t_ want Xena.

She can’t bear to be close to her here, and it’s not just because Xena is so lost and Gabrielle is not strong enough to be the person she needs. She can’t stand the touch of her hand, the heat and the passion and all the things she can’t afford to feel. She can’t look into her eyes without becoming the version of herself that Xena still sees, the small, shattered thing she was the last time they came here. It breaks a little more of her every time she tries, every time she sees her face reflected in Xena’s eyes, a stark reminder that she, like Amarice, is still so young.

That doesn’t happen when she looks at Amarice. Gabrielle doesn’t see her weaknesses reflected in her eyes; they’re more like hers than Xena, rich and pale, and in them she only sees her strength. Amarice is so much like both of them, the versions of themselves they were before this place tore them apart. She acts and talks so much like Xena did in those early years, cocky and arrogant and always spoiling for a fight, but she thinks and feels like Gabrielle herself did, like the eager, exuberant, wide-eyed girl who followed a warrior home because she wanted so badly to be like her. She doesn’t see the tortures that the world has to offer, doesn’t understand how dark the darkness can get. She is _light_ , in this place where Xena and Gabrielle are blind.

“Guess it really is complicated, huh?” she asks after a moment.

“It is.” Gabrielle thinks of Xena’s teeth in her shoulder, of her breath in her ear. It sends a pang straight through her chest, so powerful it almost splits her ribs. “It really is.”

“Okay.” Amarice’s voice isn’t exactly steady, but it carries a surprising amount of conviction. “I mean, uh… I said I’d have your back, didn’t I? And, uh… like you said, I’m just getting in the way out here anyway. So, uh… that is… if you… uh… I mean…”

Gabrielle closes her eyes for a moment. “It’s not going to be fun,” she says again, though it feels more like she’s reminding herself than informing Amarice. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to… if I’m strong enough or brave enough or…”

“Sure you are.” The confidence comes so naturally to her now; it’s inspiring, if not really infectious. “I saw you on the ship, remember? You trained me. With your shoulder and your stomach and all the rest of it, you went like a dozen rounds with me and you barely even broke a sweat.” She grins, a little shyly. “I mean, there was sweat . Like, a _lot_ of sweat. But it was, like… voluntary, I guess? Or, uh, something like that. You know?”

“I know.” In spite of herself, she almost chuckles. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Pfft. You say that _now_ , ’cause you’re better. At the time, I thought you were gonna…” She shakes her head, like even now she can’t bear to think about it. Little surprise, given what Gabrielle knows she was thinking at the time. “I’m just saying. You’ve gotten so tough since you kicked all that peace and love stuff. No way you’re not tough enough for this.”

“You have more faith in me than I do,” Gabrielle says. _And more faith than Xena does._

“Well, isn’t that why you wanted me to tag along? To be your support squad or whatever?” She spreads her arms wide, and the grin on her face widens into an insufferable smirk. “Gimme a ‘G’!”

Gabrielle groans. “By the _gods_.”

But somehow she’s smiling too.

*

All Xena has to say, when Gabrielle finally tells her, is “Good.”

It’s not exactly the response she was expecting, or really hoping for. She had the whole conversation planned out in her head, speeches and monologues like some of her best stories; she anticipated outrage, fury, assumed that Xena would lose what tenuous grip she still has on her temper, to put her foot down and try to control this just as she tries to control everything that upsets her. She couldn’t control it last time, Gabrielle remembers; she couldn’t save her, couldn’t stop her killing Meridian, couldn’t stop Dahak planting Hope inside of her, couldn’t stop any of the things that happened in that temple. Gabrielle expects her to over-compensate now, to strap her down if that’s what it takes to keep her from going back there.

She doesn’t, though. She doesn’t look at her, and when she says _“good”_ she sounds like she actually means it, like she understands why she’s going and, more than that, like she understands why it has to be now. The part of Gabrielle that has longed for this kind of respect is thrilled; the rest of her can’t quite help wondering if it’s just that Xena doesn’t care. She’s so obsessed with the Romans, with avenging the crucifixion, maybe she no longer thinks that a years-dead memory is something worth crying over.

“Good?” Gabrielle echoes, trying not to sound too thrown. “That’s all? Just… ‘good’?”

Xena shrugs. They’re inside their shared tent, and she’s keeping herself busy by rearranging their bedrolls; as far as Gabrielle can tell, there was nothing wrong with the way they were arranged before, but she understands better than anyone the significance of finding a distraction in moments like this.

“I don’t know what else to say,” Xena says after a moment, giving the nearest bedroll a vicious kick; Gabrielle’s fairly certain that it’s hers. “You don’t need me to remind you what happened in that temple. Meridian, Khrafstar, _Dahak_ … you don’t need me to remind you what they put you through, or what it brought down on us both. You don’t need me to pat you on the back and say _‘it’s going to hurt; you know that, right?’_.” She hesitates, glancing briefly at her. “You _do_ know it, right?”

Gabrielle smiles. _She does care,_ she thinks, more relieved than she thought she would be. “I know it,” she says.

“So, then, what do you want me to say? You know I can’t go with you right now. We came here so I could help these people fight off Rome, and I can’t leave here until I’ve done that. You know that, Gabrielle. You…” She trails off, eyes narrowed. Gabrielle ducks her head to hide the shame. “Of course you know that. That’s why you’re doing it now.”

It’s not a question, and Gabrielle’s response is evasive. “Maybe.”

Xena sighs and answers for her. “If you wanted me to come with you, if you wanted us to do this together, you would have waited until the fighting was over.” She shakes her head, shrugs off whatever insult she might have taken. “So what do you want? Permission?”

“Of course not.” She wrings her hands. “I just… I thought you should know. I thought you…”

“Yeah.”

There’s a heavy weight to the word, but she doesn’t say anything else. Their eyes meet at last, Xena’s glittering in the dim half-light of the tent, and there are so many other words inside them, so many things she’ll never trust herself to say. _“I don’t need to,”_ she always says when Gabrielle asks why. _“You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?”_

Gabrielle never has the heart to say that sometimes she wants to hear it anyway.

“Xena,” she says.

“It’s probably for the best,” Xena says, pressing on as though the tension never existed at all. “Things are going to get messy out here. Gotta say, I’m glad you won’t be here to see it.”

Gabrielle wonders whether that’s the truth or whether she’s just trying to make her feel better about it. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah.” She does mean it. Her voice is so thick. “It’s going to get rough, Gabrielle. I mean, _really_ rough. We’ll have to do far worse things than eradicate a few Roman scouts if we’re going to stand a chance in this thing, and that’s not something I’d want you to be a part of. After Caesar…”

“Caesar’s dead,” Gabrielle points out softly.

“And you’re not. And I want to keep it that way.” Her shoulders slump, exhaustion and anger in equal measure. “So, yeah. I’m glad you won’t be here to see that. I’m glad you’ll be somewhere safe.”

 _Safe_. The word rends her, leaves her shuddering, makes her feel sick to her stomach. It pricks underneath her skin, raising cold sweat and goosebumps, and for a moment she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to come back from it.

She thought that was true the last time as well. She thought that Dahak’s temple was ‘safe’, thought that it was a haven for the people who needed it most. Sweet, peaceful words whispered with just the right amount of conviction, and she wandered willingly into that place, into the dark god’s inner sanctum, only to find there was no sanctuary there at all. She gave herself willingly to his followers, to _him_ , because she was stupid enough to believe that it was safe, that she was safe while she was there.

It’s more than that, though. Gabrielle is terrified of that place, yes, cut through to think that anyone might look at it and think the word ‘safe’, but that’s not what guts her now. It’s the fact that it’s _Xena_ saying the word, that it’s _Xena_ looking at her and telling her straight to her face that she is safer in the place that violated her than here at her side.

“You call that ‘safe’?” she whispers breathlessly. “ _You_? By the gods, Xena, that temple…”

“That temple is rubble and ash,” Xena reminds her, not at all gently. “The altar’s gone. Dahak and his followers are gone. Everything that hurt you there is _gone_. If you have to go back to try and make peace with what happened there… well, you already know that it’s going to hurt. Of course it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not safer than _this_.” She spreads her arms; the tent is empty, but it’s obvious that she’s referring to the camp, and the battlefield beyond. “If I had to choose between some empty, forgotten temple and all of this I’d send you back there in a heartbeat.”

She doesn’t mean it the way it sounds, Gabrielle knows, but that doesn’t make it cut any less deeply. She feels like she’s been punched in the stomach, not just once but twice. It’s bad enough that even now Xena would willingly send her away to some out-of-the-way place just because she thinks there might be something dangerous here; but far worse is the thought that she would send her back _there_ , to that temple, that she would never stop to wonder why it doesn’t feel ‘safe’ to someone so scared of it.

“You’d send me back there?” she echoes, dumbstruck. “ _There_ , Xena? To protect me from a few Romans?”

Xena frowns. “You just said you wanted to go back,” she says, because of course she doesn’t understand.

Gabrielle wants to shake her. _But you’re not supposed to want it for me,_ she wants to cry. _By the gods, Xena, you know I still have nightmares about that temple. You know that better than anyone. You’re the one who holds me when I wake up. You’re the one who tells me that it’s over, that they can’t hurt me any more. You’ve seen what that temple did to me. You’ve seen the things it left inside. How can you tell me that you’d choose that for me whether I wanted it or not? How can you look at me, knowing everything, and say that it’s safe?_

She doesn’t say any of that, though. She doesn’t shout it, doesn’t whisper it. She just says, “Xena.”

Xena hears that. Gabrielle will probably never know if she heard the rest as well, but the name alone catches her attention and makes her move. She closes the space between them in about half a step, hands strong and steady when she rests them on Gabrielle’s shoulders. There’s a purity to the contact, palm covering the spot where her teeth sank in and fingertips grazing the edge of Mavican’s wound.

Gabrielle hasn’t thought much about the wound since they docked. She didn’t really realise how well it’s healing until she feels Xena’s fingers there and finds that it doesn’t hurt, until she floats outside herself and discovers that she’s not in any pain at all. She feels like she’s drifting, staring down at her own body, at Xena’s hands, like she’s split apart inside. She’s never felt that way before, not when Xena is touching her.

“Gabrielle,” Xena says, but in her the name is not enough.

Gabrielle hates the sound that comes out of her. It’s raw like she feels, a groan that wants to be a whimper or a wail, something strong that wishes it could be weak. She tries to hide her face, to shake her head, but she’s transfixed, held in place by Xena’s eyes, the twist of her mouth, the way she’s suddenly so close, so present, so much the woman Gabrielle knew last time, the woman who arrived too late to save her.

Xena pulls her in, wraps one arm around her back with her fingers splayed between her shoulder blades and holds her head with the other. It’s protective, deliberate, and though she wants to squirm away somehow Gabrielle finds herself leaning in to it, clinging almost by instinct. They’ve done this so many times, stood here like this, Xena all over her, wrapping her up in her arms and her body, and Gabrielle presses her face to her shoulder now and wishes with everything she has that it would help.

She feels like she’s back on board the ship, begging Xena to let her take care of herself for once in her life, knowing now as she did back then that she would need to do this, to face her pain alone. Maybe Xena knew too; maybe that’s why she keeps using words like ‘safe’, not for Gabrielle’s sake but for her own, to balm the terrible things she still feels. Maybe she knows it’s not safe; maybe she just wants to pretend it is.

“Xena…” Gabrielle chokes, her breath shuddering in waves against Xena’s collarbones.

“I’m sorry,” Xena whispers; she’s breathless too. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Gabrielle doesn’t know if she really means that or if she just thinks it’s the right thing to say. They’re both as raw as each other right now, and Gabrielle trembles to think of how long it’s been since they stood so close and felt so far away, so separate from each other. The last time she felt like this, lost in Xena’s arms, was after Hope, after Solan, after Illusia, back when everything was laid bare between them except the one last secret she kept for herself. She almost lost herself again after that, she remembers; she came within a breath’s distance of giving up her memories, the good as well as the bad, but she didn’t. Even feeling as hollow as she did, still it was more than she could do to give up Xena’s arms.

She gives them up now. She pulls back, turns away, and asks, “Why does it hurt to be close to you here?”

“I don’t know.” Xena doesn’t sound particularly upset by the question. She just sounds worn out. “I wish I did.”

Gabrielle wishes she did too. She feels so disconnected, pulled apart from everything she thought she’d made peace with, and she doesn’t understand why. When they came back from the dead, when she looked up and saw Xena’s face, saw her own reflected in her eyes, she felt a kind of comfort she’d never known before; she felt like she was home, and in the same breath she whispered _“for eternity”_ she knew that they would be.

Later, when they came back from Ares’s little game, from Mavican and days and nights in a shared body, she felt uncomfortable in her own skin. _“I saw you,”_ Xena said, and Gabrielle wanted to hide. She was ashamed that Xena had seen her fall and fail, frustrated that she was still the weakest piece of whatever they did, vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been for a long time and hungry to prove that she was worth more than the hole in her shoulder.

Now, _here_ , she looks at Xena and doesn’t know what to feel. She sees her own face reflected in her eyes all over again, but this time she doesn’t recognise it at all. They’re strangers here, both struggling and separate, and she doesn’t understand why. It was so long ago, the last time they came, and they’ve both been through so much since. Why does it still feel so fresh, so present? Why does she shrink away like she does when Xena touches her? What’s happened to them that it’s suddenly so easy to cut through the lines that bind them?

“I’m taking Amarice,” she blurts out. It’s unnecessary, but she has to say something.

Xena’s face hardens to stone, then to steel. Gabrielle can feel something shift between them, a tension that feels wrong and frightening. It’s not like Xena to indulge in petty jealousy, to let it show when she feels rejected, but there’s no mistaking the way her eyes cloud over, the way her jaw tightens. _You can’t stand to be near me,_ she’s thinking, _but you’ll let her go back there with you?_

“Good,” she says, without conviction. “She’ll keep you safe.”

There it is again, that word. _Safe_ , like a wide-eyed young Amazon can protect her from where she’s going. _Safe_ , like anyone could. _Safe_ , like it’s Xena’s place to tell her what safety feels like in a place she couldn’t save her from.

Gabrielle shakes her head. “I don’t need her to keep me safe, Xena.”

Xena opens her mouth. Gabrielle can hear the unspoken question, the ache to reach for her, to press and push until she cuts through to the heart of all this. _Oh? Then what do you need from her?_

 _I don’t know,_ Gabrielle thinks, but she doesn’t get the chance to say it because Xena doesn’t ask the question. She wants to, that much is obvious, but she is nothing if not restrained, in this if in nothing else. She stares at her for a long moment, then turns away as well.

“Good,” she says again.

Gabrielle wonders how such a sweet word can taste so incredibly bitter.

*


	8. Chapter 8

*

They leave at dawn and travel light.

Boadicea gives them a map and lends them a horse. “He’s old,” she explains when Gabrielle worries about draining resources. “He won’t see another battle anyway. Frankly, you’ll be doing me a favour by taking him off my hands.”

Gabrielle tries to argue, to say that they’ll be fine on foot. She doesn’t mention the part of her that maybe doesn’t want any means of expediting their journey, the part of her that maybe doesn’t want to reach her destination at all. The horse looks strong enough, even useful, but the thought of getting there quickly fills her with a dread that stops her breath.

Not that she gets a chance to turn it down, of course; even if Boadicea wasn’t practically thrusting the poor beast into her hands, Amarice is quick to leap on any convenience that comes her way. She takes him by the reins almost before Gabrielle can get a word in, muttering something about looking gift horses in the mouth and leading him away in a rush. She’s cranky this morning, no doubt some combination of the early hour and the fact that neither of them slept particularly well, and Gabrielle knows better than to antagonise her when she’s in this sort of mood. In any case, she supposes there’s no real harm in bringing the horse; no-one says they actually have to _ride_ him.

Xena isn’t there to say goodbye. Though the sun is barely above the horizon she’s already long gone; Boadicea tells them that she left camp hours ago, but doesn’t elucidate on where she’s gone or to what end. Gabrielle doesn’t ask; she’s fairly sure she doesn’t want to know, and if the look on her face is anything to measure by neither does Amarice. Far better, they both agree, to blithely assume she’s checking stock or fortifying defences than stop to ask questions and inevitably regret it.

Once they get going, Gabrielle sets a slow pace; they walks side-by-side, the horse carrying their gear a few paces behind. It’s probably not the most efficient use of their resources but it serves them well enough for a start. Visibility is low and the ground is wet; it’s not ideal for riding, even if they did know the area, and it makes for a good excuse to take things slow. In any case, neither one of them are in any rush to hasten the journey; Gabrielle’s heart is seizing in her chest, hammering at the thought of it, and Amarice is… well, _Amarice_.

For once, she’s not chatty. Gabrielle halfway expects to spend the morning deflecting unpleasant questions about their destination and the terrible things that happened there, but she doesn’t. Whether that’s because Amarice senses how she’s feeling or is just too tired and cranky to care, it’s difficult to tell, but either way the silence a relief. Amarice can be a boundless source of energy when she wants to be, but right now she’s more a well of sullenness than anything else. 

Despite herself, Gabrielle is grateful for that. No doubt the atmosphere will shift as the morning wears on and Amarice wakes up a little, but for now at least she’s content to stomp along grumbling about “stupid Britannia weather,” and that’s as much conversation as she seems willing to pursue right now.

For her part, Gabrielle kind of appreciates the weather. The rain is relentless but mild, a chilly and pervasive drizzle that never breaks into a full rain but never quite dissipates either. It’s a far cry from the last time she was here; the change is a welcome one, putting some distance between herself and the memories burning inside of her.

She remembers hanging from a cross with the sun in her eyes, dazzling almost to the point of pain as she heard the command for her legs to be broken, bracing endlessly for a blow that never came. She remembers how the light left her halfway blind, helpless and afraid and with no idea of the worse things still to come. In the split-second before Xena sprang up from the ground to rescue her, the sun was the only thing she had to focus on. She couldn’t believe how bright it was and all she could think of was how being hung so high made her feel like she could reach up and touch it.

She remembers, too, the unnatural storm when Hope was born. She remembers the darkness pouring over her like water, remembers drowning the thunder with her screams and her sobs, remembers being so grateful for the lightning, the flashes that lit up Xena’s face in the moments when she needed it most. She remembers so much, so many stupid, silly details that should have been lost to memory. They seemed so unimportant at the time — who cared about the weather when her whole body was being pulled open, when a child was being pushed out of her? — but now it feels so impossibly heavy. The pain and the fear are hazy and distant, but she remembers the storm in perfect detail.

“I like it,” she hears herself murmur. The words seem to come from some place deep inside of her, desperate to ground itself in the present, in the dull greys and lazy drizzle. “It’s… calm.”

“What, this?” Amarice holds up a hand, palm facing up. The rain sifts between her fingers, too fine to catch. “It’s stupid, that’s what it is. Doesn’t even know what it wants to be. Is it rain? Is it mist? Who freakin’ knows?” She rolls her eyes, irritable and dramatic. “It’s just like these people: stupid and indecisive, and cold.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Gabrielle says. “And I wouldn’t call the people that either.”

Amarice barks a laugh, high and crude. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re too polite.”

She says the word like an insult, just like she always does. Gabrielle shakes her head, and swallows back a wry chuckle. “A little politeness can go a long way,” she says, though she doubts it will make a difference. “You should give it a try some time.”

“Pfft, I don’t think so,” Amarice shoots back. “That stuff’s not really for me.”

“How do you know?” It’s a genuine question, asked with sincerity. “You can’t solve everything with weapons, Amarice.”

“Oh yeah? Try telling that to Xena.” She flashes her teeth. “You know what she did to those Romans?”

“I know enough,” Gabrielle says, much too quickly.

It’s true, and it’s not. She doesn’t really know the facts, but she doesn’t want to. She knows as much as she needs to just by knowing Xena. She’s been there before, after all, staring into Xena’s angry, haunted eyes, swallowing down acid as she hears her say _“I did what I had to do”_. She’s read the deeds between the words, seen the blood on her hands and her clothes, and she’s cleaned up after it all, again and again and again. She doesn’t need to know the gory details to know the things that matter.

Amarice is still new, both to the world and to Xena’s way of doing things. She’s still in that blissful, ignorant phase where she needs every little detail spelled out for her or else it’s incomprehensible, always hungry for knowledge or information or the glory of other people’s achievements. Gabrielle was like that once, until she learned that sometimes knowing is worse.

Amarice is staring at her now, intense and sober for the first time since they set off. With the sun starting its ascent behind the clouds, she seems to be waking up a little.

“Yeah,” she says, suddenly quiet. “Yeah, okay.”

It’s probably as close as she’ll ever get to saying _‘maybe you’re right about that politeness thing’_ , but it doesn’t have the feeling of a victory. Gabrielle doesn’t like the intensity in her, the sudden violence, the way she seems almost as angry as Xena was after they came back. She remembers the heat in her, the passion and the urgency when she said _“all of you”,_ when she demanded that Gabrielle give her everything. _“Show me how strong you are,”_ she said, but Gabrielle heard _‘show me that you can protect yourself when I’m not there to protect you’_.

Xena would kill every Roman in Britannia if she could; she’d kill every Roman in the known world, and never once stop to wonder if they deserved it. They’re all the enemy so far as she’s concerned, and she has learned too many times the price of letting them loose. The last time they were here, her preoccupation with Rome cost Gabrielle so much, but Xena has never been able to acknowledge how much of the blame lay with her hate. It controls her and consumes her when she’s caught in it; it becomes a living, breathing thing all its own, as destructive as anything at Caesar ever did to her.

She was furious enough last time, driven by memories of a hurt long since healed, echoes of herself hanging from a cross with her legs broken. Now she has two more memories, two more crucifixions under her belt: Gabrielle’s, averted, the last time they came to this gods-forsaken island, and then the one that stuck, years later, both of them together, both of them too weak to look at each other as they bled to death up there.

Xena deals with those memories the same way she deals with everything. She fights anger with more anger, hatred with more hatred. The sight of her like that — like _this_ — is frightening enough, even on a good day. To Gabrielle, who has never given in to those feelings no matter how deeply they dig their claws into her, it’s another layer to the crushing, devastating hurt that springs to the surface every time she looks around and sees where she is, every time she stops to catch her breath only to find herself reliving it all again and again and—

“No,” she whispers, shaking it off and closing her eyes. _Not again, not now, not this time._

She doesn’t realise she’s said it out loud until she looks up and finds Amarice’s fearful, helpless eyes, finds her staring at her like a child watching a parent or a sibling choke through a seizure, not knowing what’s happening or why, only that it’s something they can’t stop.

“You’re doing it again,” she says, high and tremulous.

Gabrielle takes a deep breath. She tries to focus on the simple things, on the rain catching in her hair and in her eyes, on the grass under her feet, wet and springy and so very green.

“I’m sorry…?”

She didn’t mean for it to come out like a question, but Amarice seems to take it that way.

“You keep doing that,” she says. “Disappearing. Like you’re not with me any more. Like you’re… like you’re _there_.”

“I’m—”

“Yeah. ‘Sorry’, right?” She sounds bitter, but Gabrielle can tell that it’s bravado, that the anger is just a mask for sharper feelings, worry and fear and so many things she’s convinced are unbecoming of a warrior. “You should be sorry. Because you won’t… you won’t tell me where _there_ is. And I’m here but you’re there, and you won’t tell me how to… how to get there and bring you back here.”

She’s rambling, voice rising as the words tumble out of her, and it’s compassion as much as guilt that stops Gabrielle in her tracks, that makes her turn and touch her arm. Amarice stops too, mouth half-open, ready with another diatribe, but whatever she wants to say dies on her tongue at the sight of Gabrielle’s face, at the wordless promise that it’s all right, that she’s back here now, not there.

Gabrielle catches her hand and holds on tight. Amarice’s eyes go wide, locking on the place where their fingers join. She’s breathless, and the sight of her makes Gabrielle’s breath catch too, the two of them gasping in the cold, wet air.

“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle says again. She means it. “I really am. It’s just… I don’t know where to start.”

That’s true, too. There are so many things haunting her, so many little moments that seemed so insignificant at the time, so many dark places this island dredges up inside her; she doesn’t know where to begin, which one is most important. She doesn’t know which memory will take hold of her in a given moment, which word or thought will bring out which nightmares. She once prided herself on her self-awareness; now she can’t make sense of her thoughts or feelings from one second to the next.

She remembers killing Meridian, the blood on her hands, the horror and the scream that tore out of her when she realised what she’d done, when she learned that it was all for nothing, that it was what they wanted her to do. She remembers being lifted, suspended, wrapped in flame, remembers the pain and the confusion that came with it; she hurt so much, _so much_ , but she couldn’t understand why.

It was days before she found out, before it came together, then all of a sudden she did understand, all of a sudden it made perfect, sickening sense… and, yes, she remembers that too. _“I’m not pregnant,”_ she said to Xena, and _“that’s ridiculous,”_ and _“stop talking like that.”_

Where does she even begin, explaining any one of those myriad pains to Amarice?

“It’s just hard,” Amarice is saying. She seems to sense that Gabrielle is struggling with this, and is trying in her usual awkward way to make it easier. “For me too, I mean. Seeing you like this. Like you were before we came here. You remember? You were all _‘oh, Britannia’_ , and I didn’t understand, and you… you wouldn’t tell me and Xena wouldn’t tell me either and both of you together were just so…” She growls, frustrated. “I mean, I love you guys. You know I do. But sometimes it’s like you both go to some place I’m not invited, and I don’t know what to do with that. You know?”

“I do know,” Gabrielle says, with honesty. “Xena, and I, we don’t really… we’re not used to having people around us. At least, not people who care enough to ask. Joxer comes and goes, but he doesn’t pay much attention to what goes on around him. He’s just sort of… there.”

“Yeah.” Amarice smiles a little, but it fades fast. “Useless son of a—”

“ _Anyway_ …” Gabrielle interrupts, a little sharply. The last thing she wants to think about right now is Joxer, but it still sits wrong inside of her to hear someone else insult him. “You’re the first one to really ask these sorts of questions.” She smiles a little too; it’s just as short-lived as Amarice’s, but just as genuine too. “Well. Since me, anyway.”

Amarice actually laughs at that. “Right. Keep forgetting you were the pain-in-the-butt tag-along before me.”

Gabrielle doesn’t laugh, but she feels herself relax just a little. She feels better when they talk about things like this, as though she can reshape the world into something simpler as long as they keep talking about simple things. It makes her feel very fond, very affectionate.

“You’re not a pain in the butt,” she says with real warmth. “Well, not all the time, anyway.”

Of course Amarice rises to the bait. “Uh huh, sure. And you’re not a peace-and-love do-gooder all the time either.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Gabrielle says. She squeezes Amarice’s hand then slowly lets it go. “And I’m glad you’re here.”

It’s true. She can barely even remember what ‘glad’ means in this place, but when she looks at Amarice that’s what she feels.

*

They take a break around lunchtime, by unspoken agreement.

Specifically, they blame it on the horse. Neither one of them want to be the one to cave in and admit they’re hungry — or, worse, tired — and the horse makes a convenient excuse for why they’ve been flagging as the morning wears on. Travelling with Xena for as long as they have, they’re both well aware of the benefits to taking a break every once in a while to recharge, and of eating well on the road, but Amarice’s youth and stubbornness brings out more than a little of Gabrielle’s own; it makes her competitive, makes her want to prove that she can go for longer without complaining.

They’re admittedly somewhat mismatched, hard-headed and hot-headed by turns, and without Xena’s no-nonsense reason to ground them it all becomes a matter of pride. Blessedly, Boadicea’s old horse has some measure of the common sense they both lack; he’s not shy about flagging when he’s tired, and that makes it easy for them to point at him in unison and blurt out, “ _He_ needs a break.”

They split the work between them comfortably enough. Gabrielle tends to the horse, guiding him to a nearby stream and brushing him down while he drinks and grazes and catches his breath, while Amarice wanders off with a bow and a hunting knife in search of some more substantial meal for the two of them. It’s as close to harmonious as they ever really get, even with Xena around to temper them.

Standing by the horse and watching the ripples break the stream’s surface, Gabrielle can almost close her eyes and forget where she is and where she’s going, can almost ignore the dread, heavy as rock, in her chest.

She hasn’t looked at Boadicea’s map at all yet. The thing is expansive and clearly marked; no doubt it would be very helpful if she were anyone else, but Gabrielle doesn’t need directions to this particular temple. It’s not exactly the kind of place she could lose sight of, even if she wanted to; she can feel it, a shimmer of unwanted recognition inside of her, as turbulent as the ripples, and she’s unpleasantly aware of the fact that she could probably find it even if she was blindfolded and hobbled.

Then again, she thinks, perhaps it’s the other way round; it feels like that at times, anyway, like maybe it’s the temple finding _her_ , drawing her back tot it like a moth to a safer kind of flame, as helpless to resist it now as she was back then. It would make sense that way, really; she always was so easily led astray.

She closes her eyes, pictures it all so clearly. The walls, the altar, Khrafstar and Meridian and the others, the knife in her hands, the blood on the stone, the flames… so vivid, so close even now…

She’s barely a breath away from being taken in completely when she hears a shout from nearby.

The vision vanishes, and the memory along with it. She’s up and running before she even realises what’s happened, sai in her hands and muscles locked in anticipation of a right. Xena has taught her very well; she knows the danger of pushing down her memories, of letting them simmer until they boil over and leave scars, but she knows just as well how important it is to pull herself out when more important threats loom. She does that now, awake and alert, as though she never lapsed at all.

There’s no need to wonder where or who the sound is coming from; Amarice has been travelling with her and Xena for long enough now that she’d know her voice even with her ears completely covered. In much the same way, she doesn’t need to stop and wonder what caused it; there’s only one breed of danger still preying on Britannia, after all.

She finds them in a nearby clearing, Amarice with a blade in either hand, standing off against a pair of Roman scouts.

Amarice has the upper hand, by a long way; the Romans clearly weren’t expecting to come across anyone with a measure of talent out here in the middle of nowhere. They’re clad only in light armour, unshielded and armed with shortswords, and Amarice is driving them back like a woman possessed. Two against is easy pickings for an Amazon even on a bad day, and it’s even easier for someone who’s been travelling with Xena. Gabrielle knows that Amarice would have little trouble sending them off without help, but she’s aching for something productive to do, something to take her mind off her painful memories, and she’s eager to join the fray.

Her entrances have never been as grand as Xena’s, but they get the job done well enough. She lets out a yelp, more for Amarice’s sake than their foes’, and throws herself between them.

The Romans round on her, more out of reflex and surprise than anything else, and that gives Amarice an opening to crack one of them in the back of the head. It’s a vicious blow, loud enough that Gabrielle hears it over the clamour and the shouting, and if she was just a fraction closer to her old self it might have made her stagger; as easily startled as she was back then, it might even have cost her the fight against her own opponent, the roaring Roman storming at her.

It doesn’t, though. Not any more. There are years stretched out in the space between that Gabrielle and this one, and this one knows better than to let the _crunch_ of metal on bone stop her.

Her opponent swings, and she blocks it without hesitation. Maybe she’s better with the sai than she thinks she is, because the motion comes so naturally, so effortlessly to her, it’s like an extension of herself. She puts all her weight behind it like she’s been doing it all her life, catches her balance and uses it to throw him off his. She drives him back, one step and another, then sweeps his legs out from under him. He hits the dirt, dazed but unharmed, and Gabrielle kicks the sword out of his hand without a second thought. It all happens in about three seconds, and she can’t believe how easy it is.

She steps back, catches her breath and tries not to look as surprised as she feels. Unprepared as he was, he’s not likely to put up much of a fight without his weapon, and that’s good enough for her.

Not so for Amarice, apparently. Gabrielle turns, mouth half-open to tell her that it’s over, that it was a simple clash and it’s finished now, but the words die in her throat at the sight of her, still hammering away at her opponent like her life depends on it, as though he could offer any kind of threat in the condition he’s in. He’s on the ground too, unconscious or worse from the crack she gave him, but she hasn’t even slowed down at all. She keeps going like she’s possessed, like Xena in her worst moments, slamming the hilt of her sword into whatever parts of his body she can reach, again and again and again.

“Roman _bastards_!”

She’s so angry, oblivious to everything going on around her, and she doesn’t stop even when she’s exhausted her strength. In a flash she rears back, whirling her sword around like Xena does, turning it so the point is pressed to his neck.

Gabrielle knows what’s about to happen, and it tears the breath from her lungs; she’s done playing and now she’s moving in for the kill. She has to realise by now that there’s no threat, no danger, but that doesn’t matter any more; now she just wants him dead. Gabrielle has seen Xena do this sort of thing more times than she can count, and invariably the only thing that stops her from crossing that line is _her_.

It’s easier, in its own way, to stop Amarice, because they’re physical equals. Gabrielle might not share the same sort of bond with her that she does with Xena, but she’s a match for her in ways she’ll never be for Xena.

With Xena, she has no choice; she has to use her words, her voice, her idealism because they’re the only skills she has against her. She’s never been able to match Xena physically, and she doubts she ever will, but Amarice is a different story entirely. She’s strong enough, and talented, but she’s not even close to an Amazon of Ephiny’s standing, much less Xena, and Ephiny and Xena are the ones who taught Gabrielle. Amarice might be taller, but she’s slimmer too, slender and wiry in all the places that Gabrielle has worked so hard to build muscle. It will take very little to overpower her, she knows, and she does.

“That’s enough, Amarice!”

The shouting is more for show than anything else; it’s not her voice that stops her, and she knows it. It’s one hand on her arm, the other on her shoulder; it’s both of them tightening as hard as iron when she drags her away from the motionless Roman body.

“Get off me!” Amarice has to know that she’s no match for Gabrielle, but she struggles anyway, almost desperate in her frenzy. “I gotta finish it! That’s what Xena would do!”

Gabrielle knows that’s true. If Xena had been here instead, she doubts she would have been able to stop her with force or with words; she’s been increasingly violent ever since they chose to return here, and the hints of what she and Amarice did to the last group of Romans they came across leaves very little to the imagination. Thankfully, though, Xena isn’t here, and Gabrielle isn’t afraid to point that out.

“It doesn’t matter what Xena would do,” she says. Her voice is as firm as her grip, and just as hard to shake off. “She’s not here. _I’m_ here, and I—”

“But she’s right!” Amarice blurts out. She’s wriggling like a fish in Gabrielle’s grasp, to no avail. “We let them go now, they’ll just go crawling back to Suetonius or whoever! They’ll go after Xena and Bodacious—”

“Boadicea.”

“Whatever!” Her voice is rising, closer to panic now than anger. This isn’t just about killing Romans. “They’ll go after them, or… or they’ll come back and go after _you_.”

Gabrielle’s heart seizes in her chest. Her grip falters ever so slightly. “Amarice.”

“I’m serious! They already got you once, didn’t they? You and Xena, and they…”

“I know what they did.” Gabrielle glances down at the Romans at their feet. “That doesn’t change the fact that this is wrong.”

“Yeah, well, they did wrong first!” Amarice snaps, as though that changes anything. “They freaking _killed_ you. And I’m not just gonna sit around playing nice and waiting for them to get up and do it again.” She shakes her head and takes advantage of Gabrielle’s momentary distraction to, yank her arm free and lift her sword again. “Not gonna happen. Never again, you hear me? Never—”

“ _Amarice_.”

She wills herself back into action, stepping between them once again. Neither of the Romans are particularly eager to fight now, the first unconscious and the other disarmed. Gabrielle knows that they’d sooner just cut their losses and run, and if she gets her way that’s precisely what they’ll do. No more needless bloodshed or violence or death. Not here.

“Gab—”

“I said _no_.” She pushes her backwards, not hard but with genuine threat just the same. “Amarice, it’s not going to happen again. Not here or anywhere else. I swear to you, I won’t let it. But running around killing every Roman we see isn’t the way to avoid it.”

“Xena thinks it is.” It sounds like a confession, and Gabrielle can see the flash behind her eyes, knows that she’s thinking of yesterday, of their scouting mission, of whatever ruthlessness Xena decided was necessary to cull Suetonius’s men, of whatever Amarice herself did to help. “Why else do you think she tore them up like she did? Bet you anything it wasn’t to help her old ‘friend’.”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to argue, then changes her mind. Now isn’t the time for this conversation, not with the two Romans still within reach. It’s for their sake, not her own, that she turns to them, still blocking Amarice’s path. Sad though it is, she doesn’t exactly trust her to hold herself in check right now, and she wouldn’t put it past her to try and barrel through, maybe even hurt her a little in in her haste to do what she thinks needs to be done. Xena would have, after all, and it’s no secret that Amarice is more Xena than Gabrielle right now.

“Get out of here,” she tells the man she disarmed, the one who’s still conscious. “Take your friend with you, before mine decides to break any more of his bones.” She turns around, grabbing Amarice by the arm again to keep her from doing anything ill-advised. “You can tell Suetonius that Boadicea has Xena on her side now, and they’re both baying for his blood. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll pick another island to terrorise. If he doesn’t…”

She shrugs, leaving the rest unsaid.

It’s not much. A half-hearted warning is nothing at all next to the kind of message Amarice wants to send, but at least it’s something. Even here, feeling like she does, at least she’s doing _something_.

*

As soon as they’re alone, Amarice turns on her.

She’s got her weapons sheathed now, thank the gods, but the look on her face makes it quite clear that she’s not above drawing them again if Gabrielle gives her the least reason. She’s spitting mad, so much like Xena in the way she lets her warrior’s instincts rule her head and overshadow her heart. Gabrielle supposes she should be used to dealing with this sort of thing by now, but even after so many years it still takes the breath out of her. She’s come a long way from that wide-eyed wonderer from Poteidaia, but fighting with the people she cares about still makes her very uncomfortable.

“You should’ve let me kill them!” Amarice is yelling, unabashed in her fury. “Now they’ll go running back to Suetonius and then he’ll know Xena’s here and—”

“I’m sure he already knows,” Gabrielle says. Her voice is calm, but her stomach is churning. The memories are sharp again now, as keen as the blade she once held. “Amarice, we’re not… you can’t just kill everyone you see who happens to look like a Roman.”

“They don’t _look like_ Romans,” Amarice counters hotly. “They _are_ Romans!”

“They were also disarmed. And one of them was unconscious.”

“Still evil bastards,” Amarice says. “Still the enemy.” She looks Gabrielle right in the eye, lips trembling with passion and pain. “They nailed you to freaking crosses. They made a freaking _spectacle_ of your dead bodies. They deserve a whole lot worse than what I would’ve done. Better to die at the end of a sword than… than like _that_.”

“Better not to die at all,” Gabrielle says.

Amarice rolls her eyes. “That’s a load of Eli bull, and you know it.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, tries to catch her breath. In the heat of the moment it all seemed so organic, so obvious; no-one deserves to die unarmed and unable to defend themselves, and that would have been true even if they’d been bloodthirsty centurions instead of hapless scouts. Her convictions haven’t changed even if her path has, and it was no stretch at all to reach inside herself and remember Eli’s teachings, to stay her own hand in the same moment that Amarice lost control of hers. It came easily to her, just as it always comes so easily to take Xena’s hand in the moments when she’s also lost, when she needs to be guided back.

Now that it’s over, though, with the threat gone and no-one here but the two of them, she doesn’t feel good at all. She’s not thinking of Rome like Amarice is, like Xena would be. She’s not thinking of Suetonius the immediate threat or the ghost of Caesar, the visions of crosses that she knows still haunts them both. No, Gabrielle is thinking of Meridian, of the blood staining her shirt, staining Gabrielle’s hands, staining the dagger as she pulls it out of her. She’s thinking of a different kind of death, and the consequences that still weigh down so heavily on her. She can’t kill here, can’t let Amarice kill here, and it has nothing to do with Rome.

“We don’t…” She forces her eyes open, forces them to focus on Amarice, on the present, but this time it doesn’t help. “Amarice, _no_.”

Perhaps sensing that she’s not really there any more, Amarice surges forward and shakes her. She’s the one with the vice grip now, the one with fingers like iron and eyes burning hot, and Gabrielle yelps her surprise at the strength and the ferocity in her. She doesn’t even seem to remember that just a few short days ago she was fretting over her injured shoulder and helping her to drink with worry on her face.

She definitely isn’t fretting now, and she isn’t worrying either. She’s rough, aggressive to the point of losing control, and though she’s careful to avoid Gabrielle’s shoulder, still the pain flares up again just a little, the memory of heat and water bringing her back to the present.

“They killed you!” Amarice yells, not really seeing her at all. Apparently Gabrielle’s not the only one who forgot where they are for a moment or two. “They killed you! They killed Xena! They—”

“ _They_ didn’t do anything.” It’s important for them both, for Amarice who sees Caesar in every sword and for herself as well, seeing Meridian’s dagger every time she closes her eyes. “Amarice…”

“Don’t! Don’t get all ‘peace and love’ and whatever! Not now! Not again! Isn’t it enough that all that Eli crap got you killed once? You really want to give it a chance to do it again?” Gabrielle opens her mouth to tell her that that’s not what’s going on, that it wasn’t Eli’s path that led to her death but a chain of events that could never have been avoided. Amarice, of course, doesn’t give her a chance to get the words out; she’s rushing on like a waterfall. “Nuh uh. No way. I said I’d have your back, and I do, but I can’t have your front too. I can’t have all of you, Gabrielle, not all by myself. You gotta… you gotta…”

The violence is bleeding out of her now, the anger and the panic both replaced by a kind of despair. She’s just as urgent now as a moment ago, but all of a sudden it feels very different. She’s still holding on to the hatred, of course, just like Xena would, but that’s not what’s driving her any more. Now, more than ever, it’s the fear.

“Amarice.” Gabrielle wills her voice to stay steady, to give away none of the hurts inside her head. “I won’t shy away from defending myself or protecting you or Xena or whoever needs it. You have to trust me on that. I have weapons, and you know that I’ll use them if I have to. But I won’t… Amarice, I’m not going to let you slaughter unarmed and unconscious men just because you’re scared they might turn out like Caesar.”

“Xena says—”

“Xena isn’t always right!”

She’s shouting too now, and she doesn’t realise until the words are out that this is about more than killing, that it’s not just the memories of Meridian sharpening her thoughts now but the memories of Xena too, of seeing her so possessed by exactly this kind of hate, of seeing her so fixated on Caesar and Romans and killing that the world all but fell apart around her, that _Gabrielle_ fell apart right in front of her and she never even noticed.

The power in her voice brings Amarice up short, stops her in her tracks. “Gab…”

“It’s the truth,” Gabrielle tells her, lower but no less fierce. “Xena is obsessed with Rome. She was obsessed the last time we came here, and she’s obsessed again now. And you… Amarice, you can’t be obsessed too.” She takes a deep breath; she’s shivering to her bones, though she’s far from cold. “I need you to not be like Xena. I need you to be _you_.”

Amarice scowls, offended by the implication. “Being like Xena _is_ being me,” she snaps, as though that somehow makes her more of a hero.

“No, I don’t think so.” It might be; honestly, she’s not sure. All she knows is that she has to believe it’s not. “You’re young, and you feel like you have something to prove. You’re afraid of being hurt, so you cover it up with bravado. Xena doesn’t do that. When she hates, she hates with every part of her. She hates like it keeps her alive, like it… like she can keep _me_ alive if she hates hard enough. But she can’t.” Admitting it out loud hurts more than she wants to admit, though she knows Amarice won’t understand why. “Hate doesn’t save lives, Amarice. It destroys them.”

“Yeah?” Amarice is so stubborn, so angry; fighting back is all she really knows. “What would you know about it?”

It’s an accusation, a threat. She says _‘you’_ like an insult, and Gabrielle knows that she’s thinking of the other version of herself, the one who refused to pick up a weapon even to save her own people. Ephiny was dead, Gabrielle and Amarice were both mourning her, both so desperate to do honour to her memory, but one of them couldn’t hate enough. That was Rome too, she remembers, and apparently old grudges die hard. Amarice really believes she’s not capable of feeling the things that so often overpower her and Xena.

The question isn’t an easy one to answer, though. _What would you know about it?_ There are so many memories she could dredge up, so many terrible moments surging up in her, that for a moment she forgets to breathe.

It’s the perfect opportunity to talk Amarice through some of what happened here, what she and Xena went through the last time, together and apart. It’s an opening to expose herself a bit, to talk about Xena’s grudge against Caesar, about the way her distraction left Gabrielle hanging helplessly from a cross, about all the other ways Xena’s behaviour left her vulnerable and exposed and ripe for the breaking. It’s the perfect opportunity to bring up any one of the dozen things that happened on this island, any one of the dozen ways that Xena’s hatred and rage blinded her to Gabrielle’s pain in the moment she needed her most. It’s the perfect opportunity to look Amarice in the eye and say _‘I know more about hate than you ever will’_ …

…but all it takes is one look at her face, and all those words die unspoken.

Amarice worships Xena. Gabrielle knows that all too well, both from the time she’s spent in her company and from her own personal experience of feeling exactly the same way. They are so much alike in the way they look at Xena, and the way they feel about her. It hurts.

Gabrielle knows how precious a thing it is, looking up to someone like that, believing in the good things in them. It lends itself to being disappointed, even to being hurt, but it lends itself to such greatness as well. Gabrielle might have saved Xena from her darker path more than a few times, but Xena has saved her just as often; Xena was the one who took a chance on an idealistic little village girl from the middle of nowhere, who made her part of her story, gave her the fabric and the thread to weave her own. Xena has shaped so much of the woman Gabrielle has become, the woman she’s still becoming.

Xena has done so much, given so much. She took that idealistic young girl and shaped her into something strong. This Gabrielle, the one that girl became, would never take away Amarice’s chance for the same.

 _“What would you know about it?”_ Amarice asks her. _What would you know about hate?_ Gabrielle could shake her to the soul, tell her everything she knows, everything that Xena’s hate has stolen from her. She could break her faith, maybe break her heart too, but she doesn’t. She can’t.

She closes her eyes, sighs, and says, “You’re right. I don’t know anything.”

*

The afternoon passes in strained silence.

It’s not exactly awkward, but it’s a far cry from the comfortable warmth of the morning, a far cry from Gabrielle looking over her shoulder and finding Amarice and remembering how it feels to be glad. It’s a far cry from Amarice trying to break through to her in the moments when she disappears, when the past rears up and swallows her whole. It’s a far cry from the brush of her hand or the sound of her voice, the places where they connect, the gasping, choking, surface-breaking moment when Gabrielle hears her and tethers herself to her, when she guides her back through the haze, back to the present, back to herself. It’s a far, far cry from the comfort she drew from having her close.

Of its own accord, Boadicea’s horse takes to walking between them. It’s as though he can feel the tension in the air, as though he’s trying to make it easier on them both, separating them and keeping them apart with his broad shoulders and his long mane. Gabrielle is grateful for the barrier, in much the same way she’s secretly thankful for Argo on the rare occasions that she and Xena fall out over stupid things; it’s easier now than then, though, because Argo always takes Xena’s side, butting her nose in where it doesn’t belong. Boadicea’s horse seems to be cut from a kinder cloth; he helps them both, not taking sides, and though Gabrielle would never admit aloud that she needs a _horse_ to temper her immaturity… well, the facts speak for themselves.

Amarice keeps her head down, scowling sullenly at the ground. She thinks she’s being casual and cool when she cuts a glance upwards, peeking through the curtain of her curls to try and make out Gabrielle’s expression. She’s not, of course; she’s about as subtle as Gabrielle was all those years ago when she kept sneaking hopeful looks at Xena and imagining she didn’t notice. It awakens a little of the old affection, seeing her like this and thinking back to her own innocence.

The sun is disappearing over the horizon when they stop for the evening meal, and Gabrielle is the one who finally breaks the stubborn silence.

“We should make camp,” she says. It’s calm, authoritative, and nothing like the peace offering she wants. “It’ll be too dark to see soon.”

Amarice doesn’t bother to look up. “If that’s what you want,” she mutters, sounding more tired than moody. “It’s your ‘spiritual journey’ or whatever.”

“It’s not a…” Gabrielle shakes her head, backing away from the confrontation. She really, really doesn’t want to make this into a fight as well “Never mind. It’s at least another day to the temple anyway. Here’s as good a place to rest as any.”

“Sure. Your call.”

Still, for all her sullenness, there’s a flicker of vulnerability in her when she unloads the horse. She thinks she’s doing a good job of hiding it, and perhaps if it was Xena here instead of Gabrielle she might even succeed; Xena has never been very good at reading emotions, at seeing the deeper feelings beneath the stoic surface, but Gabrielle has made it her life’s work. Reading people, understanding them, pouring empathy into even the most hardened of souls is what she lives for, what she’s always lived for. Amarice, emotive as she is, makes it easy.

Gabrielle reaches for her when she turns around. “Amarice…”

“What?” she snaps, annoyed at the sudden softness. “I’m agreeing with you, aren’t I? Isn’t that what you want?”

Gabrielle frowns. “No,” she says, very slowly. “No, that’s not what I want at all.”

“Really?” She snorts, though Gabrielle can tell it’s another bout of bravado, that there’s no real bite behind it. “Could’ve fooled me, with all that pouting you’ve been doing.”

“I wasn’t _pouting_.” Still, the petulance feels good, like cool running water after a long sweaty day. “I was just… processing.”

“Sure you were.”

Gabrielle pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s hard to tell which is the bigger challenge: fighting down the rising headache, or swallowing the urge to fight stubbornness with stubbornness. It takes her a moment to centre herself, to find the place where she’s calm and patient, to not take Amarice’s attitude personally. She feels attacked too, Gabrielle reminds herself; she feels threatened here, just like Xena does, and it’s not her fault that she doesn’t see the deeper wounds. She’s never been one for looking below the surface.

“Listen,” Gabrielle says at last. “I know you don’t understand my point of view. Honestly, I hope you never will. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that.”

Amarice grunts. “Uh _huh_.”

“I’m serious. It doesn’t matter if we agree on this. It doesn’t matter if we agree on anything at all. Believe me, it’s enough that you’re here. It’s enough that you’re _you_ , that you don’t…”

She trails off, shaking her head. There are a thousand ways she could end that thought, but she doesn’t trust herself to voice any of them without letting slip too much. Not that it matters; even unfinished, the sentiment seems to shine through, and when Amarice does look up her eyes are very bright, as close to hopeful as she’ll allow herself to get.

“Yeah?” she chokes.

“Yeah.” It’s not quite a truce, but it will pass for now. “Amarice, we don’t need to share ideals or philosophies or opinions. But that you’re _here_ … that you’re here for _me_ … yeah, it’s enough.”

“Uh huh.” She’s looking up now, but she’s still having a hard time looking her in the eye. Gabrielle understands that; conceding any amount of common ground was difficult when she was green as well. “So you trust me to go out and hunt us some dinner, or what?”

Gabrielle forces a smile. Things definitely aren’t right between them, but they’re not quite as tense as they were either. It’s a start. At the very least, it’s enough until they’re both a little more rested and a little less irritable.

“Yeah,” she says, very carefully. “I trust you.”

*

This time, their separation is blessedly Roman-free. Amarice brings back food and nothing else.

She’s clearly still thinking about it, though, because when she stomps back to camp, flushed and weighed down by a pair of dead rabbits, all she has to say is “I’m not sorry.”

Gabrielle blinks a couple of times, then shrugs and turns her attention to the carcasses. They’re clean kills, and big; she wouldn’t expect anything less from a trained Amazon, but still she nods her approval, fumbling in her pack for a skinning knife.

“I don’t expect you to be,” she says, keeping her tone as even as she can. “Amarice, you’re so much like Xena sometimes, it hurts. Other times you’re so much like _me_ , and that hurts more.”

“I’m not like you,” Amarice says, then heaves a tight, frustrated sigh. Her jaw says _‘I’m still not sorry’_ , but her eyes tell a very different story. “Look, Gabrielle, I know you’re tough. I’ve seen you fight with those things—” She gestures at the sai in her boots, and for a second or two her whole face lights up. “—and I know what you can do without ’em too. You could kick any butt you wanted and probably not even blink. But you… you don’t got any follow-through, you know?”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Don’t gotta think it. It is.” She says it so matter-of-factly, with the blithe arrogance of youth. If she believes something, that makes it a fact; Gabrielle wishes she was still able to think that way. “You do this thing, you know? You keep trying to pick and choose who your enemy is based on whether or not he’s got a sword in his hand. That’s dumb. They’re not gonna stop wanting to kill you just because they can’t. Soon as they get another weapon, you’re dead. And you…”

Gabrielle sighs, eyes closed. She knows where this is going. “Amarice, don’t.”

“I gotta. Because you don’t get it. Gabrielle, the last time you refused to kill a Roman idiot because you thought he was unarmed and harmless, it got you killed. You gave that two-bit loser Brutus a second chance, and he… and Xena and _you_ … and… and…”

“No.”

She won’t listen to that. She can’t afford to hear the truth in it, can’t afford to start wondering if Amarice is right after all. If she is, then maybe Xena is right, too, to kill with the kind of ruthless abandon that’s been so much a part of her since they came back from the dead, since she found her new chakram and a new sense of self. If she’s right too, if they’re both right, maybe that means they’re right to treat her the way they do, like she’s weak and incapable, too good for her own good. She can’t afford to doubt those things, her strength and her morality, and least of all _here_.

Here, of all places, she has to remember Eli. His path might not have been hers in the end, but she has to remember the way it made her feel, the fleeting, fractured peace she found during the brief time she followed it. She has to remind herself that there are other options out there, other ways to draw comfort than by drawing her weapons. In Rome or Greece or the rest of the world, pulling her sai will serve her just fine, but in Britannia…

In Britannia, a weapon drawn is a life taken, whether she sheds the blood herself or not. In Britannia, a life taken is another one planted inside of her; it’s the world turned upside-down, it’s everything changed, it’s Xena losing her son decades too early, it’s Gabrielle saying _‘my child’_ to the spawn of something she still doesn’t fully understand. In Britannia, killing is about more than death; it’s about Meridian and all the pain her death wrought, and Gabrielle is so afraid of seeing history repeat itself, so afraid of losing control of her own impulses like Xena is losing control of hers. She is so afraid of doing the wrong thing again, of being punished… and, worst of all, of seeing Xena punished too.

“Gabrielle…” Amarice blurts out.

“ _No_.”

“But I’m _right_!” It comes out more like a plea than an assertion, flat and hopeless. “You know I am. Deep down in some stupid place you don’t wanna see, I know you get it.” She spreads her arms wide, emphatic and desperate. “I saw you back on that ship. Heck, I _fought_ you on that ship. You remember? Your wound was so bad and you were so sick, but you stood there and taught me how to use those things. You fought and you fought and you fought, even when you couldn’t even stand up straight. You did that. _You_.”

Gabrielle sighs. She can’t deny that. “I did that, yes.”

“Right. Because you had to. Because it was the only thing keeping you in one piece when your whole body was falling apart. Because… because…”

“Because I felt _helpless_.” Gabrielle studies the dead rabbits. She turns the skinning knife over in her hands a few times, then passes it over to Amarice. All of a sudden she can’t stomach the thought of turning those poor corpses into a meal. “Because being strong was the only way to not feel that way. But there isn’t _here_ , Amarice. Sparring with you on a ship or defending Xena when she’s forgotten who she is… it’s not the same as being _here_.” She squeezes her eyes shut, blocks out the knife and the rabbits. “Here, Amarice. The violence, the killing, all of it. It means something different here.”

“Why?” The anger is bleeding out of her now; maybe she can see that this means more than what it seems, or else maybe she’s just getting tired of arguing too. Either way, she’s softening by the breath, and when she looks up at Gabrielle it’s with the eyes of someone finally willing to listen. “What’s so damn special about Britannia, that you think Romans aren’t Romans?”

“It’s not about Romans,” Gabrielle says softly.

Amarice, of course, doesn’t understand. Just like Xena, seeing what she wants to see, feeling the only thing she knows how to feel, she doesn’t understand. Amarice, at least, has the patience to look and learn and ask.

“All right,” she says, guarded but open. “So what the heck _is_ it about?”

Gabrielle takes a deep breath, searches Amarice’s face for any hint of dishonesty. She wants to find the headstrong young woman who joined up with them after Ephiny’s death, the one who thought she knew everything, who might ask all the right questions but who doesn’t actually want to hear the answers. She wants to find the Amarice who looked straight into the eyes of her queen and said _‘kick butt and take names later’_ , who has never seen complexity beyond the end of a sword. She wants to find the Amarice who isn’t ready to know what this place has done, the Amarice who is too young and too headstrong and too angry to step back and see something deeper than the peace-loving Gabrielle she once met. She wants to find all those things, because if she does then she’ll have a reason to hide the truth.

She doesn’t find any of them, though. What she does find is a new Amarice, the one she caught glimpses of back on board the ship. She finds a young woman who isn’t nearly so young as she looks, a woman who has lost and grieved and suffered, and more than once. She finds an Amarice who has been through great pain and come back changed. She finds an Amarice who is looking at a new Gabrielle as well, who watched the woman she thought was weak pick up a weapon she’d never seen before and tear apart a band of thugs without even breaking a sweat. She finds an Amarice who has been proven wrong and realised that the world didn’t end, an Amarice who is slowly but surely learning how to learn.

That Amarice might easier to talk to, but this isn’t an easy thing to talk about. It doesn’t matter who she’s looking at, who she’s talking to; Gabrielle cannot talk about this without wanting to shatter. She doesn’t want the grown Amarice, the one who is learning, the one who knows how to soften; she wants the responsibility hauled off her shoulders by an Amarice who doesn’t deserve to share it. She wants an excuse to say _‘you’re not mature enough to hear this’_. But looking at her now, she knows that it’s not true.

She closes her eyes, draws in a deep breath, and lets it out in a sigh.

“Where we’re going,” she starts, very slowly and very carefully. “This temple, or whatever’s left of it now… I killed there. For the first time in my life, I took someone else’s.”

Amarice blinks a couple of times. “Okay…” she says, because she can’t say anything else.

Gabrielle swallows, presses on. “It was… it was a bad situation.”

That’s an understatement, she knows, but it’s as close as she can get to the truth; it’s as close as she managed to get with Ephiny as well. She wonders if it would help, saying that. _‘This is what I said to Ephiny; I’m telling you exactly what I told her.’_ She wonders if Amarice would see how precious a gift that is.

Maybe she does, because there’s awe in her voice this time, when she says “Okay” again. It gives Gabrielle the strength to go on, to offer just a little more.

“I thought it was right,” she says. “But it wasn’t. I really, really thought I was doing the right thing. I thought it was the only way to… to save someone who needed help. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was just… it… _I_ was…” Her voice breaks, and she shakes her head. Even now, she can’t say the words. “You think it’s just one mistake, just one life. But it’s _not_. Amarice, you have no idea how much pain I caused… how much _pain_ …”

“Uh…” She’s frowning. “That sounds kind of melodramatic…”

She doesn’t mean it in cruelty, Gabrielle can tell. She just doesn’t know what else to say, so she’s blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind, crude and insensitive though it is.

Gabrielle recognises that feeling, and she understands it all too well. It’s so much easier to fall back on humour and criticism when faced with a hard, hurtful truth. She’s done the same thing herself more times than she can count, and not just with Xena; that makes it easy to shake off the words without taking offence. And anyway, it’s as much her fault as anyone’s; how could she expect Amarice to see how deep the truth runs when she’s the one who won’t explain?

“It’s not,” she whispers, as close to a confession as she can muster. “I know it sounds that way, but believe me, it’s not.”

She half expects Amarice to laugh at that, to roll her eyes and say _‘sure it’s not’_ , but she doesn’t. She just says “Okay” for a third time, so softly now that Gabrielle almost doesn’t hear it, and picks up one of the rabbits as though that’s the end of it.

“I will fight,” Gabrielle tells her, very quietly. “I’ll fight every Roman in the Empire if I have to. Don’t doubt that. But killing… _here_ …” She shakes her head again. “I can’t. I won’t. You don’t have to understand, but…”

“Yeah.” For the first time, Amarice looks remorseful; she might not understand it all, might not even really understand anything, but maybe she understands enough for now. “Yeah, I don’t. And maybe I won’t. Not if you don’t tell me. But that’s…” She swallows, eyes on the rabbit to keep from looking up at Gabrielle. “That’s okay. I guess. You do what you gotta do, keep whatever secrets you gotta keep. Just because I don’t get _this_ doesn’t mean I don’t get _that_.”

Gabrielle swallows hard. “Thank you, Amarice.”

“Sure.” She takes a deep breath, and Gabrielle realises that she’s shaking too, that this is just as painful for her, if in a very different way. “Just… you gotta promise me, okay? Promise me you won’t let them take you again. That’s all I need. Honest. But I do. Need it, I mean. And you don’t gotta understand either, you know? But I do. So please… _please_ … promise me that.”

Still shaking, she holds the knife to the rabbit’s throat, watches as the blade catches the dying sunlight. Gabrielle turns away, feeling sick even before the blood starts to flow.

“I do promise,” she whispers, more to herself than Amarice. “Never again.”

*


	9. Chapter 9

*

She wakes before dawn the next morning, disoriented and strangling a scream.

It’s few breathless, panic-stricken minutes before she can shake off the visions clouding her head, banish the revenants of a dream she’s had too many times lately. Meridian, smiling, her teeth as sharp as the dagger in her stomach; Khrafstar too, laughing as he transforms into something otherworldly, something sharper and realer than Meridian’s smile. It takes Gabrielle an eternity to remember that they’re both gone, that they’re dead and buried, lost to the past, shadows buried beneath the temple they’re fast approaching. It takes her another eternity, a much longer one, to find strength enough to try and sit up.

She can’t. At some point in the night, it seems, Amarice crawled into her bedroll again. Maybe she was talking in her sleep again, voicing her nightmares; maybe it was a gesture of compassion and not selfishness this time. Gabrielle will never ask. Either way, there she is, pressed up against her side, holding her close with one arm slung over her waist. She’s fast asleep, like usual, but her arm is heavy enough that it drives Gabrielle back down.

The sight of her like that, curled up against her in perfect quiet, as close to peace as she ever really gets, sends a lance right through Gabrielle’s chest. It’s not quite pain but it’s not quite solace either; it’s just _feeling_ , and all the good and bad that goes with it.

It makes her think of that night, so long ago now, when she reached out to Xena in the frightening midnight dark and got only _“go to sleep, Gabrielle”_ in return. It makes her remember the gut-punch of disappointment, and the strange emotion that replaced it a moment later when Amarice looked up with wide eyes and pretended she was cold.

This is the first time it’s happened since then. Gabrielle wonders if it has anything to do with yesterday’s encounter with the Romans, if Amarice is channelling Xena somewhat, feeling the need to protect Gabrielle even in sleep, or simply trying to remind herself that she’s still here, that she is real and solid and still breathing, that Rome and its crosses are far, far away. It’s probably not a coincidence that she’s fallen asleep with her free hand brushing Gabrielle’s neck, close enough to her pulse point that she can count the beats.

Gabrielle lies there for a short while, waits until the restlessness overpowers her completely, then tries again to disentangle herself.

It’s easier than she expects, pulling herself free without waking Amarice, and it brings a smile to her face when she rolls over and goes right back to sleep even with her arms empty. It shouldn’t really surprise her, she supposes; Amarice sleeps like a rock, even when she’s sleeping _on_ a rock. It’s not very Amazonian, really, but Gabrielle has long since given up on trying to make sense of all the little idiosyncrasies that make up who she is.

She smiles a little, watches over her as she drifts back into a deep sleep, then turns and heads off into the underbrush.

She walks a fair distance, putting as much space as she can between herself and their camp while still able to hear anything out of the ordinary. She doesn’t want to disturb Amarice by making noise, obviously, but it’s more than that right now: in a flash of shame and guilt, she realises she just wants to be alone for a while.

There’s a relentless throbbing somewhere deep in her brain, a horrible hammer-on-stone headache that she knows will follow her around all day; it might be a different story if Xena were here with her intimate knowledge of the local herbs and Gabrielle’s dubious pressure points, but as it is she doubts she’ll be able to shake it off any time soon. More than that, though, her body feels like it’s on fire, shaking with unwanted energy, and she knows that she has to do something to drive it out before it devours her.

She finds a good-size clearing, not too far from camp, and she uses the space to train for a while with her sai. It’s as good a wake-up call as any, she thinks, and it chases off what ghosts remain from her dreams.

It comforts her all over again. Holding the weapons in her hands, working with them, going through the motions of strikes and blocks and counters, feeling the power in her body as it moves and adjusts… just as it was on the ship, it’s as good as a dozen herb mixtures and a dozen pressure points.

The more she works with the sai, the more at home she feels with them, alive with weapons that let her choose what kind of damage they inflict, that let her keep the dangerous parts tucked in close against her elbows, safely out of the fray. She fights defensively, at least for the most part, using the length of the shaft to strengthen her arms and fortify her blocks, striking sure and swift with the pommels, timing every move to the breath. It’s more of a comfort than she’ll ever be able to say, having a weapon that can kill but doesn’t have to.

She felt the same way with the staff, to some extent, though of course Ephiny was quite pointed in showing her all the myriad ways it could kill if she wanted it to. Gabrielle remembers feeling herself blanch when she demonstrated, picturing the scene entirely too vividly as Ephiny laid it out in front of her. She remembers thinking, _I’ll never do that; I don’t care what happens to me, I’ll never use this weapon to break a bone or kill a man_.

And she didn’t. Not once with the staff in her hands. Even here in Britannia, driven to kill for the first time in her life, it was with someone else’s weapon, not her own.

The sai have a similar feel to the staff. Different, of course, because they invoke such a different style, but comfortable just the same. They’re made for closer combat and call on a surer kind of strength, but they bring the same kind of control that she found so alluring with the staff. Knowing that the thing could kill but choosing to never use it that way… it’s the same as the way she holds the sai now, striking with the hilt, letting the points be her defences, her blocks instead of her blows. She’s the one who keeps them tucked, who turns them inwards instead of lashing out, who lets the world see that she could drive them through its heart if she wanted to, and lets it know that she won’t.

They’re the perfect weapons for someone like Gabrielle. She’s still struggling with the warrior’s path, still learning how to fight again after so long with no weapon at all, still teaching herself that it is all right to hurt people who would hurt her or her loved ones first. It’s the perfect weapon, too, for someone who has recently returned from the dead, someone who is so desperate to prove — to Xena and Amarice, of course, but to herself most of all — that she can defend herself, that she can protect them, that she is _strong_.

She is. She knows that she is. And with every blow she lands, every imaginary attack she blocks and counters, every breath she takes in perfect rhythm with her movements, she comes closer and closer to remembering.

It’s hard to tell exactly how long she’s been working when Amarice tracks her down. Long enough that her arms are burning from holding the weapons high, but not long enough that she’s feeling it in her legs; they’re much stronger than her arms, and long accustomed to being overworked, and though the sai tremble just a little in her hands, still her body holds itself steady and solid. It’s a good workout, and she’s just about to sheathe the sai and slip back to camp when the voice catches her by surprise.

“Looking good.”

There’s no irony in the statement. Gabrielle wonders how long Amarice was lurking, watching from the shadows before she announced herself. She musters a smile, shrugs off the compliment with her usual modesty.

“Could be better.”

She turns, letting her arms drop down to her sides and straightening her knees. Amarice has an odd look on her face, a hint of a flush colouring her cheeks, like she’s the one who’s been training. Gabrielle isn’t entirely sure what it means, but it’s pretty obvious that she’s slept off any lingering conflict from yesterday; once again, things feel easy between them, as comfortable as they were before. With the horizon looming as dark as it is, that’s all Gabrielle can hope for.

“I dunno about that,” Amarice is saying, unexpectedly shy. “I still think you’re a force of nature or something with those things.”

Gabrielle chuckles, embarrassed. “Not really,” she says. “I’m just making it all up as I go along.”

It’s only partway true. She still feels like a novice with the sai, like a child learning to use a tool made for stronger, more skilled hands, but she’s not as unfamiliar with the concept as she likes to claim she is. As a girl in Poteidaia, obsessed with becoming so much, more than she was, she read as many scrolls as she could find, an endless stream of stories about warriors and their journeys. People, places, weapons, styles; she studies arts and techniques from corners of the world she always assumed she’d never see, words she couldn’t pronounce and pictures that stuck in her head for years and years.

That changed after she started travelling with Xena, though, when the warrior princess became the only lesson she wanted to learn. It’s been years since she read a scroll about something she didn’t understand; the world itself is her teacher now, and she’s learning more with the sai in her hands than she ever did from reading about them. But still the old lessons linger, echoes in the back of her head that show her where to start.

She’s still very much a beginner, and of course she really is making most of it up as she goes along. That’s true enough. But she is also a bard, and she’s learned more than anyone will ever know from others’ words.

Amarice hesitates for a moment, shuffling her feet. It’s not like her to be so self-conscious, but Gabrielle can feel the unease pouring off her in waves; it’s like she’s seeing her now for the first time, not as Xena’s tag-along sidekick but as formidable warrior in her own right, capable of doing with ease all those things she refuses to do by choice.

Gabrielle knows that’s not true. Amarice has seen her fight before, has even complimented her — _“you impressed me,”_ she said on the ship, and _“you came back more”_ — so she knows this isn’t exactly a revelation. Still, though, something about the lack of light and the intimacy of the moment lends itself to something strangely emotional, just like that evening on the ship.

 _“I could teach you,”_ Gabrielle said, back then. _“If you want me to.”_ Now Amarice is looking at her like she so wants so badly to hear those words again.

“We should get going,” she mumbles, but Gabrielle can hear the words between those words, the ones she can’t quite bring herself to say.

She’s right, of course. They really should get going. The temple might not be going anywhere, but Gabrielle’s resolve might be; she needs to get there, needs to make peace with the things she remembers when she thinks about it. She needs to do what she came here for, needs to focus on herself. They’re both awake, both ready and eager to get back on the road… and yet the hopeful, wide-eyed look on Amarice’s face makes it so hard not to indulge her. It makes it hard, too, not to want the same indulgence for herself.

Gabrielle cuts a glance up at the sky. The sun is probably up by now, but it’s lost behind the clouds. She turns back to Amarice with a smile on her face.

“We’ve got a little time,” she says, and holds out the sai.

*

A little time turns into more than either of them expected.

They work together much more smoothly this time. The last time they tried to spar like this, back on the boat, it was difficult to know which of the two of them was the more distracted; Gabrielle was incredibly weak, working against an infected wound and a lurching stomach, and Amarice was so worried she could hardly keep her her legs from shaking under her. This time they’re both healthy and at least mostly in one piece, and that makes it easy for both of them to focus like they’re supposed to.

Amarice is a natural fighter, and a confident one but she doesn’t take to the sai as intuitively as Gabrielle has. Her style is too ruthless and much too violent; she doesn’t understand the art of schooling herself in combat, of striking to daze or disarm instead of kill, of taking an enemy out of the fight without taking his life. She tries, and Gabrielle can see that she’s taking on board what she says, but she holds herself like Xena does, like she’s always seeking out her enemy’s deepest veins, and it’s visibly frustrating for her to try and adjust her style for something more like a brawl than a massacre.

Gabrielle tries as well. She lets Amarice fight the way she wants, lets her lash out with the point of the sai instead of striking with the hilt, lets her learn her mistakes through the experience of being deflected again and again. She fights her own way, uses her body as much as the weapon, lets the two of them work in harmony with each other. Amarice uses her weapons as tools, like swords and bows, but Gabrielle’s power comes from a place inside herself, the strength in her hips and her legs; in her hands the sai become an extension of her body, but in Amarice’s they are loose and unwieldy, forced to take on a shape that isn’t theirs.

Amarice uses her length and her reach all the time, always trying to swing from a distance; just like Xena, she has the advantage of height, and she can be incredibly fast when she wants to be. Gabrielle is a fair bit smaller, but she’s definitely not lighter; she might be nearly a head shorter than Amarice, but her body is built like a fighter’s, and it doesn’t go down easily. She’s a powerhouse of momentum and muscle, and she has learned how to use that to her advantage. She ducks when Amarice swings, uses her own strength to push forward, and turns that length and reach back on her.

The third or fourth time she hits the ground, Amarice gives up the effort of getting up again. She lies there, chest rising and falling as she gasps, and lets the sai clatter to the grass.

“Okay, okay,” she grumbles, baring her teeth. “You win.”

Gabrielle tries very hard not to smirk. “I wasn’t trying to win,” she says, and definitely doesn’t point out the fact that winning feels pretty good just the same. “I was trying to teach you how to use these things without impaling yourself.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Amarice huffs. “But I think you just get a kick out of knocking me around.” She pushes herself up onto her elbows, grinning. For someone so stubborn and angry, she’s surprisingly gracious in defeat. “So much for peace and love, huh?”

Gabrielle chuckles, but doesn’t bother trying to explain the nuances at play there. She bends to pick up Amarice’s discarded sai, and slips it back into her boot with the other one. “You did pretty well,” she says, hovering over her and checking briefly for injury.

“Pfft. Not next to you.” Amarice winces a little as she sits up. “I don’t think this whole _‘hit with the hilt’_ deal really works for me. Doesn’t make sense, not when you’ve got a perfectly good sharp and pointy bit.”

“The sharp and pointy bit has other uses,” Gabrielle points out with a weary groan. They’ve had this conversation nearly as many times as _‘don’t lift your shoulders’_. “You’re not supposed to gut people with it.”

She doesn’t add that it could be used for that as well if its user really wanted, that the sai is as deadly as any other weapon if it’s turned in the right direction. It’s the freedom to choose that helps her to feel comfortable with them, the feeling that she’s the one in control of how much damage they inflict. Given enough time with them, Amarice could learn to use them to deadly effect, to make them just as lethal as her swords and daggers and whatever other blades she keeps about her person, but Gabrielle doesn’t really want to encourage that; she has a different philosophy to teach.

Amarice grunts her disapproval, just like she always does, but she has the sense not to voice it this time. At the very least, she’s smart enough not to throw down a challenge while Gabrielle’s on her feet and she’s sprawled out in the dirt.

“Whatever,” she mutters with her usual sullenness. “You gonna help me up or what?”

Gabrielle chuckles, and holds out a hand. She’s feeling better now than she has in days, light in a way that she only ever really gets from a fulfilling training session, from working herself into a sweat and feeling herself improve. She’s so in touch with her body, with its responses, and there are few things in the world that make it hum like this, holding her weapons and feeling them hum too. She lost that part of herself in the months she was walking Eli’s path, and she didn’t even realise it until she picked up the sai by happenstance and remembered how it felt to be whole again. Of all the things she loved about that way of life, she can’t pretend she misses the emptiness in her body.

Amarice frowns up at her for a moment, blinking like she has the sun in her eyes. She doesn’t — it’s up now, but still too low to be so bright even if it could pierce through the clouds — but that’s definitely the look on her face. It’s a dazed, dazzled kind of look, like she’s halfway blinded by something far too bright, and it takes her a moment to focus on the hand Gabrielle’s waving in front of her.

“Come on,” Gabrielle says when Amarice finally grabs it.

She’s admittedly showing off a little when she hauls her up to her feet with one arm, and it has the desired effect; Amarice sways a little when she stands, almost toppling over again, and it’s by pure instinct that she swerves in to steady herself on the nearest solid surface.

She does it without thinking, fumbling for purchase as her legs wobble; one hand clamps down hard on Gabrielle’s good arm, but it’s the bulk of her body that falls, bracing by instinct against her injured shoulder. She doesn’t mean to do it, Gabrielle knows, and the wound is all but healed now, but she too reacts by instinct, sucking in a sharp breath and flinching away in the moment Amarice makes contact.

It’s an accident, and it doesn’t even really hurt, but she doesn’t think to stop herself until it’s too late, until she’s jumped out of reach and left Amarice off-balance and horrified.

“Oh!” She jerks back too, realising a split-second too late what she’s done. “Oh, no… oh jeez…”

Gabrielle steadies herself. “No,” she says; it’s meant to sound reassuring, but it comes out oddly shaky. She’s not in any pain; her shoulder feels just fine. “No, see, it’s okay. I was just—”

“No, no, I…” The reassurance falls on deaf ears, though; Amarice is already a half-step away from panic. “I… I didn’t mean… I’m sorry, I…”

She’s inching backwards, desperate to put some distance between herself and the imagined wrong, but as usual she underestimates her clumsiness. She steps badly, trips over her own feet, and goes crashing back to the ground, face-first.

Gabrielle stares for a long, long moment. She opens her mouth to say _‘it’s okay’_ again, but all that comes out when she tries is laughter.

Given the circumstances, she supposes it’s understandable that Amarice loses her temper at that. She sits bolt upright, seething and wiping dirt from her face, and if looks could kill Gabrielle is pretty sure she’d be choking on her last breath right now. She’d probably deserve it, too; there are few things worse, she knows, than suffering a humiliation followed by loud laughter, and it doesn’t help at all that Gabrielle has no control over her voice.

It sounds awful, and she knows it, mocking and maybe a little cruel. She doesn’t mean it that way at all, and she tries in vain to catch her breath and shape an apology.

The moment is so _absurd_ , so surreal and utterly overblown, and she just can’t help herself. The laughter was involuntary, as much a reflex as the way she flinched back even though she wasn’t in pain, but that doesn’t mean anything to Amarice, sprawled in the dirt again and being laughed at for having the gall to worry. Gabrielle knows that it’s unkind, that she should stop, but it’s been so long since she had any reason to laugh at all.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out at last; it’s sincere, but she can’t blame Amarice for not believing it, and all the more so given that she hasn’t managed to stop giggling yet. “I didn’t…”

Amarice glares. “I was trying to be nice!” She’s still wiping at her face; Gabrielle doesn’t have the heart to point out that she’s just smudging dirt from one cheek to the other. “I was worried about you! How the heck is that _funny_?”

“No, no… it’s not… it’s…” She lets the laughter trail off into a spluttering, desperate sort of choke; flushed and chastened, she struggles to compose herself. “Amarice, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to react like that. It’s just… you just looked so…”

Amarice looks just about ready to take a swing. “I was _trying_ to be _nice_ ,” she says again, emphatic and wounded. “I thought I’d _hurt_ you. Your shoulder or whatever. I thought…”

She’s flushing too, not with breathlessness like Gabrielle but with shame and anger. The sight of her makes Gabrielle feel contrite; she remembers what it’s like to be so sensitive, to see a personal slight in every little snort or chuckle, and all the more so from someone she admires. She’ll never sit on the same pedestal as Xena, she knows, not to Amarice or anyone else, but still there’s an element of respect there, a kind of growing affection that touches them both more deeply than they’d care to admit. It’s not much, but it’s still something, and Gabrielle knows too well how deeply it can sting to turn around and see that someone she respects is laughing in her face.

“I know.” She forces back the last of the mirth, swallows it down for good. “I know, Amarice. It was rude, and I’m sorry. But my shoulder’s fine now. Really. I barely even felt it.”

“Didn’t act like it.” She’s still angry, Gabrielle can tell, but it’s slowly ebbing away into a more familiar moodiness. That, at least, she can deal with. “You acted like I set it on fire or something. I thought… after what you went through on that stupid boat, all festering and delirious and awful, I…” She turns her face away, burning hot. “I thought I’d hurt you.”

There’s real weight behind her voice now, like this is personal beyond the obvious, like she’s still horrified by even just the idea of inflicting that kind of pain, even unintentionally. It’s unexpected, especially from her. Amarice, who just last night was furious because Gabrielle refused to kill a man in cold blood, who just moments ago was sulking all over again because she wasn’t allowed to use the ‘sharp and pointy bit’ of the sai. Amarice, who still struggles with Gabrielle’s strength because her path is still not brutal enough. Sometimes Gabrielle forgets that Amarice pours her ferocity into more than just violence, that she pours just as much passion into softer things, into love and loyalty for the people she cares about.

It still feels strange, looking at her now and seeing the same glow on her face that they both get when they look at Xena. The two of them didn’t exactly get off on the right foot; Gabrielle was walking Eli’s pacifistic path of love and Amarice was a hungry, vengeance-driven Amazon, desperate to prove herself. Gabrielle understands far better now, where those violent urges came from; she understands Amarice’s guilt and shame, knows that she feels responsible for Ephiny’s death; Amarice, likewise understands too that Gabrielle is a capable warrior, that she can defend herself and anyone else who needs her help, that there is more to her than a desire to heal.

They both see each other differently, and that makes things very, very different between them. There’s a depth of affection between them now, so strong that it still catches them both by surprise, a well of emotion that leaves them choked when they look at each other and see something more than another silly girl chasing Xena’s shadow.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Gabrielle says. Suddenly, her voice is very, very small. “I don’t… I don’t think you could hurt me, even if you wanted to.”

Amarice opens her mouth, no doubt preparing some witty riposte — _‘yeah, I could, you just watch me!’_ — but when she tries to speak, all she manages is “Oh.”

Gabrielle crouches to help her up yet again, but this time she freezes before she can do it.

She grabs Amarice’s hand just like she did before, but something happens in the half-second before she yanks her up; the strength goes out of her before she can swing back to her feet. Her legs are suddenly weak, and the power in her arms that she showed off so easily just a few moments ago is gone as well, leaving her stammering and flushed, palms sweaty and fingers trembling.

“Come on,” she says again, but this time it comes out in a whisper and neither one of them moves.

Amarice swallows. It’s audible, and visible too in the line of her throat, and when she says “Oh” again she sounds almost as fragile as Gabrielle suddenly feels.

What happens next takes them both by surprise. Gabrielle isn’t really sure how it happens, but she’s pretty sure it’s her fault. She can’t say for certain, but she’s the one who leans forward, gasping when her forehead touches Amarice’s; she’s the one, too, who feels her skin ignite with the contact, the closeness, the sudden intimacy. She doesn’t know why, can’t figure out how this has grown from a moment into a _moment_ , but there it is and there they are.

Suddenly she’s not helping her up. Suddenly it’s not about shared words or shared laughter but shared breaths. Suddenly what started out as an innocent misunderstanding is something deeper and purer and _more_. Suddenly it’s Gabrielle’s lips on Amarice’s cheek and Amarice’s nose brushing hers. Suddenly it’s an invitation, Amarice’s lips parting, tongue catching the corner of Gabrielle’s mouth. Suddenly it’s a shift and a hitch and _oh_ , it’s Amarice gasping into Gabrielle’s mouth, it’s Gabrielle catching Amarice’s tongue between her teeth, it’s the two of them leaning in and finding contact in new, strange places. It’s the world bleeding away into a kiss, into a heartbeat, into open mouths and closed eyes and breaths and sighs and _oh_ , it’s been so long since Gabrielle did this with someone who wasn’t Xena.

 _You made me laugh,_ she thinks. It’s such a simple, stupid thought, but it cuts her right to the heart. _I haven’t laughed since before we died. Xena’s so angry, and I’m so afraid, and you… you made me laugh…_

Amarice is the one who ends it, wide-eyed and awestruck. She pulls away, panting, and stares at Gabrielle like she’s never seen her before in her life. There are a thousand questions in her eyes, in her half-open mouth, in the way she touches her own lips and the way she stares at Gabrielle’s.

“Oh.” This time, it’s Gabrielle who says it. “ _Oh_.”

She doesn’t mean for it to come out like that, but she’s still not sure how it happened. All she really knows is that Amarice is staring at her exactly the same way she stared at Xena the first time they did this, dumbstruck and disbelieving and dishevelled. Gabrielle remembers licking her lips, tasting Xena’s and feeling the world fall out from under her. She remembers feeling all the things she can see flashing across Amarice’s face now, remembers the flutter in her chest when Xena leaned in to lick that look off her face, to kiss her again and again and again.

 _Oh,_ she remembers thinking, then just like now. _Oh, that wasn’t a dream. Oh, it really happened. Oh, it’s still happening. Oh, she’s really—_

“Gabrielle?”

“I’m sorry.” It’s a strange thing to say, but it’s all she can think of. “I didn’t mean to… um, I wasn’t… I didn’t…”

“Oh.” Amarice clears her throat; she sounds nervous and just a little disappointed. “I mean, uh, sure. Like… like an Amazon thing, right? Like…”

 _An Amazon thing_ , Gabrielle thinks. Such a strange idea, though given their separate histories she supposes it shouldn’t be.

It’s a simple truth, and it could be the truth here. Maybe it is; she’s not sure. Ephiny taught her this, showed her how to find a kind of peace in hardship, how to celebrate life in moments of mourning, how to share a different kind of love with someone who wasn’t Xena, how to find herself again in a world when she was gone. She remembers being young and lost, her heart broken because Xena was gone, because Xena was _dead_ and Gabrielle wasn’t and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, _it wasn’t fair_.

She thought it would break her. She thought that the grief would kill her as well, shatter her heart into so many pieces it couldn’t keep beating, until it had no choice but to give up and let her find Xena in the Elysian Fields. Maybe a part of her wanted it, the easy way out, dying and finding her again. She just couldn’t imagine wandering the world without Xena by her side. It was the first time she ever thought she might want to die, but Ephiny stopped that feeling before it could take her too far.

She took her to her hut and held her until the want dissolved, until her hands stopped shaking, until she stopped trying. She held her and she kissed her, and Gabrielle wept because it felt like a betrayal.

Ephiny showed her that it wasn’t. Gabrielle only knew one kind of love back then but Ephiny showed her more.

 _“She’s my heart,”_ Gabrielle remembers sobbing, choking the words into the pillow as Ephiny kissed her way down and down and down. _“She’s my heart, but I’m with you.”_

 _“You’re with me because she’s your heart,”_ Ephiny told her. _“Because your heart is broken.”_

Gabrielle didn’t know what that meant. She just knew that when Ephiny kissed her the pain was less; she just knew that when Ephiny kissed her she stopped wanting to die from the grief. When Ephiny kissed her she felt alive, like it was all right to be alive, like it might even be all right to _want_ to be alive. She pressed her face into the pillow to muffle her cries when Ephiny kissed lower, when she found her wanting in spite of herself. It was Ephiny who kissed her, Ephiny who touched her and took away the pain. Ephiny whispered Gabrielle’s name, but Gabrielle was crying Xena’s.

Ephiny held her close after it was over. _“That’s right,”_ she said, and Gabrielle didn’t understand.

It happened again a year later. Xena wasn’t dead that time, but Solan was and so was Hope. That time, Gabrielle was worse than just broken. That time, all the kisses in the world weren’t enough to stop her wanting to die.

Nothing was enough for her then. But Ephiny tried anyway, and Gabrielle remembers now how tainted she felt under her touch. She couldn’t understand how Ephiny could still love her, how any living soul could ever love her again after what she did. She couldn’t understand anything, but still Ephiny tried, still she kissed her and touched her and tried so hard to take away the pain.

Gabrielle didn’t cry Xena’s name that time. She didn’t cry any name at all. She just cried.

This is nothing like that — a kiss, a moment, no more and no less — but still she feels it echo. Xena isn’t dead this time, and she doesn’t hate her either. She just… isn’t here. In body, of course, but in spirit as well.

For all her promises, she still can’t see the person Gabrielle needs to be, and now they’re back here in Britannia she can barely see her at all. The only thing Xena sees in her now is _pain_. She sees the pain that tore her apart the last time they were her, and she sees the pain that tore them both apart up there on Caesar’s crosses. She sees every part of Gabrielle that hurts, sees every one of her weaknesses, and she doesn’t understand why all that seeing is its own kind of pain.

Xena hasn’t asked Gabrielle how she feels about this. When she took her in the trees behind their camp she didn’t ask if Gabrielle wanted it too. When Gabrielle told her that she was going back to the temple, she didn’t ask if she was afraid. She just said _“good”_ , because she had decided it was. She is so, so far away from everything that Gabrielle feels and thinks and _is_.

Amarice is not. Amarice is close and present, and the things she sees in Gabrielle are the things Gabrielle desperately needs. Amarice is here, in body and spirit and everything that matters, just like Ephiny always was. Amarice is everything that Xena, at least right now, is not.

“Yeah,” Gabrielle says at last. Her heart feels so full. “Yeah. Like an Amazon thing.”

*

They saddle up and ride through the morning.

Boadicea’s horse might be old, but he’s strong enough to carry two riders and their gear without straining at all. He sets a faster pace than either one of them could manage on foot, and he doesn’t falter even with the ground wet and treacherous beneath his hooves.

Gabrielle takes the reins, feeling the need to be in control of something, and for once Amarice seems content to let someone else control the pace; she tucks herself in behind Gabrielle, chin resting on her shoulder, and doesn’t complain.

It’s comfortable, not least of all because they can’t really talk much while they’re riding, and Gabrielle does an impressive job of convincing herself that that’s a happy coincidence. They want to outrun the weather, she decides, or else they wasted too much time sparring; there’s a hundred convenient excuses to ride instead of walk, none of which have anything to do with the fact that she doesn’t know what happened and she doesn’t want to have to talk about it just yet.

The feeling is a strange one. Gabrielle has always been the sidekick, the tag-along, the one who gazes up at Xena with a kind of wide-eyed wonder; she’s always the one who never really understood why the famed warrior princess keeps her around, what she sees in a hopeless nobody from Poteidaia. She can’t describe the awe and the love she feels when she looks at Xena, but it’s become so complicated since they came back from the dead. Xena is so different; at first she was so far removed from herself, so lost and confused that Gabrielle didn’t recognise her at all, and now she’s exactly the opposite, always angry, always on the edge of something violent, and frighteningly close to the former warlord Gabrielle first met.

Of course, Gabrielle is different too. Amarice said that she came back ‘more’, but Gabrielle wonders if that’s really the truth of it. Death wasn’t the thing that changed her, and she can’t blame it on a broken chakram or a severed soul like Xena can. Gabrielle’s changes came before she died, in that awful moment back in Rome when she turned around and saw that Xena couldn’t stand. She changed when she picked up the first weapon she could reach and ran it through the first body that reached her. She changed when she gave up Eli’s way of love, the pacifistic path that once meant so much to her. She changed when she became a warrior once more, then she changed again when they nailed her to the cross. The pain hit, and with it came the inescapable certainty that she wasn’t good enough.

She has to be stronger now. She has to be better, has to be _more_. She learned the price of being weak, and it is too high to ever pay again. Again and again and again, she learned that.

Xena couldn’t save her the last time they came to Britannia. Gabrielle knows that there’s a part of her deep inside that never truly accepted that. It’s hard to look at Xena and see anything less than the perfect hero she’s been following for years; it’s hard to look back on her own experiences and realise that Xena was the one who let it happen. Gabrielle wasn’t strong then; she was young and naïve and stupid, a little girl who walked into a terrible trap because she didn’t know better. Xena was more than her friend at the time; she was her _protector_ , and in the moment Gabrielle needed that protection most she wasn’t there.

Years later, in Rome, it all happened again in reverse. Gabrielle couldn’t protect Xena either; she couldn’t stop Alti’s terrible vision from coming true. She remembers sitting there in that cell, cradling Xena in her arms and counting down the minutes to their deaths. Xena was broken, smaller than Gabrielle had ever seen her before, and Gabrielle remembers so clearly the way she looked up at her. Xena was always the strong one, even in their final minutes; even with her spine and her spirit broken beyond repair, Xena was the strong one. The failure had to be hers; she refused to let Gabrielle take it for herself. Gabrielle remembers her eyes when she gazed up at her. They were so dry; Gabrielle’s were not.

 _“Don’t cry,”_ Xena whispered, but Gabrielle knew then, as she knows it again now, that she really meant _‘you could never have protected me from this’._

Gabrielle has to believe that’s not true. She has to believe that next time she _will_ be able to protect Xena, and that she’ll be able to protect herself as well. Here, back on the island where Xena let her down, she has to believe that she’s become more than Xena sees in her. Xena loves her more than anyone in the world, but Gabrielle has to believe she doesn’t know her well enough. She has to believe that, or what’s left? A girl, not a woman, as small and helpless as she was years ago. If Xena does know her, if the fragile little thing Xena sees really is _her_ , then what chance does she have of surviving the place that has broken her once already?

Little wonder that things are so uncomfortable between them now. They’re both remembering what happened the last time they were here, but their versions of events don’t mesh with each other. Xena is seeing Caesar’s face in every Roman, and Gabrielle is seeing in Xena all the ways she wasn’t there to protect her when she needed it, all the ways she needs to be able to protect herself. Now, for the first time since Solan and Hope lay dead at their feet, they cannot heal each other.

It shouldn’t surprise her, then, that Gabrielle finds herself taken in by Amarice, that she finds herself drawn to her exuberance and her wide eyes, to the way she watches her work with the sai, to the way she whispered _‘you impressed me’_ and the way she sees without even trying all those things that Xena still can’t or won’t. Amarice is fierce, a warrior right down to her bones, but she is also young and naïve like Gabrielle once was, and it gives her more strength than she ever imagined to look up and realise that now _she_ is the one that some naïve young woman is looking up to and calling ‘impressive’.

Xena doesn’t look at her like that. Gabrielle has made peace with the fact that she probably never will. But here and now, in the place where Gabrielle is at her most vulnerable, Amarice does. She’s looking at her like she really does believe all those things Gabrielle needs and wants to believe of herself. Amarice is learning from her, trying to become a little more like her, seeing in her a strength and a soul that she might want for herself one day. Xena has never looked at Gabrielle like that. No-one has.

The morning has long since given way to afternoon, the light drizzle swelling into a full, heavy rain, when Amarice leans in and says, “Maybe we should give the old guy a break?”

That’s code, Gabrielle can tell, for _‘I’m hungry and tired and bored’_. She knew that already, even without the auditory cue, because Amarice has been fidgeting and shuffling behind her for at least two leagues now, sighing into her ear and generally making a nuisance of herself. It’s annoying at best and a dangerous distraction at worst, and though Gabrielle isn’t particularly enamoured with the idea of stopping and getting soaked to the bone, it’s still a better option than taking another elbow to the ribs next time Amarice gets a little restless.

“All right,” she says, knowing perfectly well that the words will be lost to the rising wind. “We’re overdue for lunch anyway.”

The horse is well trained; he comes to a stop with the lightest little tug on the reins. Gabrielle dismounts with her usual clumsiness; she’s not the kind of natural equestrian that Xena is, and though she’s slowly getting the hang of riding by herself it’s still not the sort of thing she finds especially comfortable. With practice and a horse as kind and accommodating as this one, she might get better, but the only horse they have available is Argo, and Xena’s as protective of her as she is of Xena; neither one of them is in any rush to let Gabrielle take the reins, and she learned a long time ago that walking was not only easier but safer for everyone involved.

This horse is nothing like Argo, though. He actually listens when she gives instructions, and though she’s still not what anyone would call ‘steady’ as she clambers down, at least she’s not afraid of getting kicked in the head when she lands.

Amarice, as ever, hops down without a second thought, like she’s been doing it her whole life. It’s amazing, Gabrielle thinks, how she can be so gangly in one moment and so graceful in the next.

“I’m gonna go hunt,” she says, without preamble.

“Why?” Gabrielle asks. It’s about the fourth time Amarice has ‘gone hunting’ since they left Boadicea’s camp, with varying levels of success; at this point, she’s starting to suspect it’s a euphemism for something. “We’re never going to get a cooking fire started in all this rain. Might as well make do with what’s in our packs.”

Amarice looks at her for a moment, face uncharacteristically unreadable. “Knock yourself out if that’s what you want,” she says in a strange voice. “But I want to hunt.”

It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines there, to see that hunting is just an excuse for getting away from her for a while. Amarice isn’t the type to avoid her problems, but this isn’t exactly a typical problem, and for all her exaggerated toughness she’s as much a novice as Xena used to be when it comes to feelings. Gabrielle can tell that she’s still struggling with what happened, that has no idea what to do or say or even really feel, and it would take a far more selfish soul to deny her a little privacy to process it.

“Okay,” she says after a moment. “Go ahead.”

Amarice grunts, nods, and casts about in the saddlebags for a knife.

Gabrielle watches her skulk off into the brush, shoulders slumping just a little, then settles herself down on a nearby rock to contemplate their journey.

The stone is slick with rain, but it’s at least partly sheltered by a nearby tree, and that’s probably the best compromise she can hope for. The weather on this island has been dreadful this time around, and it shows no sign of improving in the foreseeable future. It seems to enjoy tormenting them, bouncing endlessly back and forth between eye-stinging drizzle and torrential downpours that drench everything they touch. Right now it’s inching its way closer to the latter, and Gabrielle is not looking forward to seeking out a dry place to make camp tonight.

She pulls out Boadicea’s map, sheltering the parchment from the rain with her forearm, and squints at the little dot where the temple is marked and waiting.

She doesn’t really need to see it there on the parchment. She’s always had a good sense of direction, and what little she doesn’t possess inherently she’s learned from experience and travelling with Xena. She knows how to gauge distances travelled, how to work out which direction she’s headed in and keep to her chosen course, to steer by the stars or the sun or the moon, or by the trees when the sky is clouded and heavy like it is now. Even if she’d never been here before, she doubts she’d have much trouble figuring out her way unaided.

The map makes it all feel so much realer, though. Half-blinded as she is by the sheeting rain, sat on a rock that looks like every other rock in the middle of a clearing that looks like every other clearing, it’s all too easy to let herself imagine that she’s somewhere else, that she’s back in Greece, far away from Britannia. Looking down at the map, seeing Boadicea’s camp and Dahak’s temple marked out so clearly, watching the ink start to bleed and run as the rain strikes it, calculating the time they’ve travelled and the distance they still need to cover… suddenly it’s all incredibly real.

They’re closer to the temple than she thought they were. More accurately, she supposes, they’re closer than she _hoped_ they were. If she’d had the courage to be honest with herself she probably would have realised long before now that they could make it before nightfall, that riding through half the day would have put them hours ahead of her walking estimates, but of course it’s not really about honesty or common sense at all; she’s just now ready to believe or accept it yet. It all feels too soon, too close and too sudden, and seeing it scrawled there in front of her in black and white makes it all terribly frightening.

She isn’t ready for this. A part of her has been bracing for it almost from the moment she said the name again, _‘Britannia’_ , choked out in a whisper for the first time in years. A part of her, small and scared and carefully locked away, knew that this moment would come, that she wouldn’t be able to come back to this island and not go back to face the temple. It’s not about her pride, not even about proving that she can do it, that she’s brave enough to do it. It’s about facing the ghosts that still haunt her nightmares sometimes, about looking her memories right in the eye and ordering them to leave her alone.

She’ll never be ready to do that. Whether the journey lasts another hour or a day, a week or a year, she knows that she’ll still feel it like a punch to the stomach when the moment finally comes, when she looks up at the horizon and sees that place again.

She knows all of that. She knows that she can’t — and, honestly, that she _shouldn’t_ — put it off a moment longer than she really has to, that it will be no easier tomorrow or the next day than it would be tonight, but still she is so, so tempted to slow their pace to a crawl, to limp through the rain and spend the night sleeping in it, to do whatever it takes to give her just a few more minutes, a few more hours, just one more lifetime to brace herself for the demons she’s about to face.

She has worked so hard to become as strong as she is. Amarice sees it, and even Xena can’t ignore it completely. _“You’re so strong,”_ she said, wanton and wanting, and squeezed her bicep until the muscle went whipcord-tight. Gabrielle knows that it’s true, that she is strong in every way she could have hoped to be, but here and now with Dahak’s temple just a few short leagues away, she feels the opposite. Not strong or stoic or even stubborn. Just _scared_.

 _“Show me how strong you are,”_ Xena whispered, breathless and so hungry.

Gabrielle crumples the map in her fist, and thinks, _I wish I could_.

*

It’s not very long at all before Amarice comes back.

She’s blessedly carcass-free this time, with no blood on her clothes and her weapons neatly sheathed; from the look of her she has nothing to show for her efforts at all, only a fistful of what looks like herbs.

Gabrielle can’t deny being a little surprised by that; she halfway expected Amarice to drag back half the surrounding wildlife just to make some kind of a point. Much like Xena, she’s exactly the kind of bloody-minded warrior who would do that sort of thing, slaughter as many innocent animals as she can just to work through her own frustrated feelings, without ever stopping to wonder if perhaps it’s not entirely healthy. The restraint this time is unexpected, but welcome, and Gabrielle smiles.

“No luck?” she asks, trying to sound more sympathetic than relieved.

Amarice shrugs; she doesn’t look particularly sullen, though, and that’s a surprise as well. “Looks that way.”

Gabrielle waits for her temper to overpower her reason, for her to toss down her weapons, stomp around then throw herself onto the nearest rock with a glare and a few choice curses, but that doesn’t happen either. Amarice just stands where she is, shuffling her feet and frowning at the herbs in her hand and looking strangely small. Gabrielle can’t make out the look on her face, but the vulnerability in her eyes is devastating. She looks like a young girl exposing herself for the first time in front of a—

 _—oh_.

“Oh.” Spoken, it sounds like a whimper. “Amarice…”

“Yeah.” She squirms a little, visibly uncomfortable, but she still doesn’t sit down. “Look… uh… I don’t… that is, I know I’m not… I mean, you and Xena… you’re…”

“We are,” Gabrielle says, very softly. She doesn’t want this to hurt. “Amarice, this…”

“I know.” It comes out sharp, closer to desperation than anger. “I’m not Xena. I get that. Not trying to be, you know? This thing… it’s not that thing. I get that.”

It doesn’t ease the guilt. Gabrielle swallows. “Good.”

“But she…” Amarice heaves a deep, sad sigh. “She’s not here. And that… I mean, she’s not here because you didn’t want her here. Because you wanted _me_ here instead. And that’s kind of… you know?”

“I know.” It doesn’t sound nearly so convincing when she’s the one saying it. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No, no. Don’t, like… don’t do that. You got enough to worry about already, okay? You got nothing to be sorry for, not with me.” She sighs again, a hint of frustration bleeding through into her voice. She’s furious with herself, Gabrielle can tell, for being so clumsy with words, so unable to say what she’s feeling. “Gabrielle, I… you… you wanted me to have your back. And I do. I got that. You wanna have my mouth or my… my whatever? You want that too? That’s… you know, it’s okay. We’re both Amazons…”

Her voice breaks on the word _Amazons_ , a kind of devastation that Gabrielle has never heard in her before. The look on her face is so strange; if Gabrielle didn’t know better, she’d think she was feeling guilty too.

“We’re both Amazons,” she echoes. She doesn’t know why; Amarice just looks like she needs to hear it.

“Right.” She takes a deep breath. “We’re both… like that. Yeah. And, like, we both know the deal. You know? We both get that it’s not… that it doesn’t gotta be… you know, _that_.”

Gabrielle tries to breathe too, without much success. “It can’t be,” she says. It’s about Xena, obviously, but it’s also not about Xena at all. “Not here. Not on this island.”

“Yeah.” Amarice’s eyes are bright; in the cloudy light, they look damp. “You’re all open and raw and stuff. Not exactly the right place for getting mushy or having feelings or whatever.”

Gabrielle wants to cry. _You see me,_ she thinks. _You see me, and you understand why it hurts, and that’s not an Amazon thing, that’s us. It’s you and me, and Xena is so far away, she’s so far, and it hurts so much to look at her when we’re both here and so far away from each other. I wish it wasn’t like that, but it is, and I’m so, so sorry._

She wants to say it out loud. She wants to make sure Amarice understands, to paint the situation in clear light and colours that won’t bleed in the rain, but the words don’t come. They’ve always been her greatest gift, but now they’ve left her alone, cold and floundering and shameful. She’s choking on tears, biting them back as a force of habit, and it almost drives her to her her knees to look around and realise that she doesn’t have to do that here.

Amarice isn’t Xena. If Gabrielle let herself cry in front of Xena here, so close to Dahak’s temple, she doesn’t know what would happen. She doesn’t know how Xena would react, but it doesn’t really matter; whatever she did, Gabrielle knows that she wouldn’t survive it. If Xena lost her temper and lost control, set fire to everything around them, burned all of Britannia to the ground, the pain would be the end of her… but then, if Xena took her into her arms, held her and rocked her and whispered her name, that would break her just as badly. It doesn’t matter what Xena would do or say; it doesn’t matter that _now_ is not _then_. When they look at each other, both of them, _then_ is all they can see.

Gabrielle doesn’t want that. It feels wrong, like tearing apart something precious and leaving its pieces scattered at her feet, but it’s the truth. When they’re finished here, on the boat back to Greece, she prays that things will go back to the way they were, that she and Xena will become what they’ve been for so long, a version of _‘for eternity’_ that doesn’t hurt like this; she prays, again and again, that when this place is a memory once more everything will be sweet and simple like it always has been, like it should be. She has to believe it will.

But of course, that doesn’t matter now. They’re not on the boat back to Greece, and they’re not even close to being finished here. Amarice is right when she looks at Gabrielle and says _“you’re all open and raw”_. She is. And so is Xena. And _‘for eternity’_ means something very different when both sides are in this much pain.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. She wishes that Xena, leagues behind them, could hear it too. “I wish I wasn’t… I wish I…”

She can’t bring herself to finish, but it doesn’t matter; Amarice hears it just the same, just like Xena would have. She looks as raw as Gabrielle feels, like she’s enduring a trauma too just by watching this one.

“I do too,” she whispers. “But not, like… not because it’d change anything. I know it wouldn’t. I just want you to not be hurting.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, feels her breath catch between her ribs. “So do I,” she says.

When she opens them again, Amarice is kneeling in front of her. It’s a strange, powerful moment, and it brings back memories of their very first meeting, of a strange young woman leaping out from the bushes, dropping her knees and calling her _“my queen”_. Gabrielle knew what that meant, of course — _Ephiny, by the gods, not her_ — and the tragedy flooded through everything else. Still, thinking back on it now makes her smile, if only a little.

She thinks of Ephiny again, as she did back then, fondness and love replacing the sick horror. She marvels to remember the things Ephiny did for her, the gifts she gave and the ones she’s still giving, even in death. She thinks of her tribe, too, Ephiny’s tribe and now hers, of the home she found there in those rare moments when Xena wasn’t there. She thinks of all the things that have brought her comfort in times like this, the love she found in those dark, dreadful moments when Xena’s was gone from her side. It _is_ an Amazon thing, she realises, and the feeling awes her.

“I got your back,” Amarice is mumbling again.

“I know you do,” Gabrielle says.

She wants to kiss her again, she realises. Her face is so honest and so hopeful; Gabrielle wonders if Xena saw those same things in her that day when they kissed for the first time, when Gabrielle was breathless and stupid and thought, _oh_.

“You can have mine too,” Amarice says. “My back and my mouth and my whatever. You can have anything you want, Gab, anything, and it… it’s okay. It doesn’t gotta mean anything, doesn’t gotta _be_ anything. Doesn’t matter. You can still have it.”

She holds out a hand, and Gabrielle realises for the first time that she hasn’t been holding herbs at all, but flowers. They’re crushed between her fingers, almost dead, but there they are just the same, precious little splashes of colour to chase away the rain and the pain of this place. They say so much, and for a moment Gabrielle finds that she’s afraid to touch them.

“Thank you,” she says. It’s not nearly enough.

Amarice leans in. She presses the flowers into Gabrielle’s hand, presses a kiss to her cheek and one to her lips.

“Anything,” she whispers.

*


	10. Chapter 10

*

The weather worsens as the day wears on.

They ride through another league or so, but it’s slow going and increasingly dangerous. The rain is sheeting now, heavy and very cold, and by mid-afternoon Gabrielle can barely even see the horse’s head in front of her. She powers through it, though, because she feels like she has to, because the pull of their destination is like an anchor in her chest, tugging and wrenching and pulling at her without mercy.

She knows that they’ll never make it to the temple in this; it doesn’t matter how close it is, or how much time they’ve made on horseback. With the weather against them it’s like pushing water uphill without a vessel. Still, for all that she knows it, somehow she can’t bear to be the one to admit it. Valid or not, hiding behind the bad weather feels like an excuse, a cowardly cover-up to hide the truth: that she is too afraid to go back there.

Blessedly for everyone involved, Amarice doesn’t have her qualms or her pride, and she’s not afraid to lean forward and say, “We gotta find shelter.”

The relief that floods through Gabrielle to hear it and not have to be the one to say it, makes her glad that she’s the one holding the reins, sitting up front with her face obscured. She can only imagine how humiliating the look on her face must be.

There’s no shortage of caves and caverns nearby, and it’s not too much of a challenge to find one that’s snug and relatively dry. Amarice crawls inside without a second thought, but Gabrielle lingers in the rain for a bit, covering Boadicea’s horse with a blanket and searching out a quiet, sheltered spot for him to graze and rest. She feels a little guilty just leaving him outside in a downpour like that, but there’s no room for him in a space so small.

“Britannia’s his home,” Amarice points out when Gabrielle joins her inside the cave. “An old guy like that, he’s probably used to this kind of stupid weather by now.”

“I’m sure he is,” Gabrielle says, appreciative of for the effort. Amarice probably doesn’t much care whether the old horse is comfortable or not, but she can see that Gabrielle does and so she makes a feint at pretending; it’s a sweet thought, and deeply touching. “I guess I’m just used to the way Xena takes care of Argo. If she doesn’t have four different kinds of grass and eight different blankets…”

“…and at least two fresh streams, right?” Amarice laughs. “I swear, she treats that horse better than you sometimes.”

She blurts it out without thinking, but it strikes them both in a way they don’t expect. It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not as far away from it as Gabrielle would like to think.

Looking at it, Xena’s problem with Argo isn’t too different from her problem with Gabrielle: she tries too hard to protect them both, to keep them safe from things they could fight off perfectly well on their own. She’s so obsessed with making sure they’ll never need to fend for themselves that she never stops to think that maybe once in a while they might like to try.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Gabrielle hears herself murmur, but she’s not sure why she’s arguing.

Amarice clears her throat, suddenly uncomfortable. Maybe she realises — belatedly, as she realises everything — that she’s made a faux pas, or else she just sees that Gabrielle is stumbling towards a path that she doesn’t want to tread right now. Either way, she’s fumbling for a distraction, and she naturally latches on to the first thing she can find; she grabs a nearby blanket, shakes it out and holds it open, arms spread wide and skin soaked through with rainwater. For someone offering shelter, she looks strangely vulnerable.

“C’mon,” she says. “Neither one of us is getting any drier like this.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes at the condescension, but crawls under the blanket just the same.

It’s natural, the way they curl up together underneath, sharing warmth and contact and trying to dry off. They’re both soaked to the bone, hair plastered to their faces and clothes clinging to their skin, but the close quarters and the weight of the blanket help to chase off most of the chill. The sensation brings with it a familiar kind of intimacy, the press of their bodies, skin on skin, not for reasons of comfort or passion or feeling, simply to ward off the cold and the rain. It’s comfortable, feeling the water dripping down into the space between them, listening to the rain hammering outside, catching their breath in rhythm with each other.

Neither of them speak for a very long time. Gabrielle can tell that Amarice is thinking about the weather, trying to figure out whether it’s her place to make a decision on whether they should try to wait it out or surrender the day as lost; it’s pretty obvious from her face that she wants to spend the night here, to take some time to dry off and warm up, to recuperate from the day’s emotional hardships even if the weather does turn itself around. It’s probably the sensible route, and it says more than Gabrielle wants to admit that Amarice is the one thinking rationally while she can’t separate logic from emotion.

It’s a very different compulsion that drives her to feel the same way, to want the same thing. A part of her would give anything to stay in this cave forever, to spend the rest of her days huddling under this blanket, pressed against a warm, familiar body, listening to the rain outside, the elements crashing against a wall they won’t ever break through. She is so, so afraid of what will happen when they finally do crawl back outside, when the rain clears and the world beyond is visible again, when she can squint at the horizon and imagine the temple waiting there for her.

“We’re close,” she says. Her voice is hoarse; she hopes that Amarice thinks it’s the rain and the chill lodged in her throat, and not the weight of the words. “We could power through, get there in a couple of hours…”

“Could catch our death out there too,” Amarice counters, just a little too quickly. “Weather’s not on our side, Gab. I know you wanna get there fast, but is it really worth drowning ourselves over a ‘couple of hours’?”

Gabrielle doesn’t argue. She doesn’t say _‘it’s not about a couple of hours’_ or _‘it’s not about getting there fast’_ , and she definitely doesn’t say _‘if I stay here, I might lose the courage to get there at all’_. She just lets Amarice believe what she wants to believe, lets her faith guide her into assuming Gabrielle is braver and tougher than she truly is; if Amarice can believe it, maybe she will too.

“I suppose you’re right,” she says after a moment, hating the quaver in her voice.

Amarice’s hand finds hers underneath the blanket. Her fingers are very cold, ice-sharp water droplets clinging to them as they wrap around Gabrielle’s. 

“Hey,” she says softly. “You doing okay?”

“A little rain never hurt anybody,” Gabrielle points out, though she knows that’s not what she meant. “I’m not going to melt.”

“Wasn’t expecting you to.” Amarice forces a chuckle; her eyes shine, tender in the dark, dank damp. “You’re not made of sugar or whatever.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Gabrielle says, like it’s a kind of revelation.

Amarice studies her face for a long, long moment. Her fingers are warming up now, squeezing Gabrielle’s in a way that spreads that warmth between them; she runs the edge of her thumb over her knuckles, callouses over callouses. She’s so thoughtful, so quiet, so unlike Xena.

It’s not really a surprise when she leans in, mouth open without words, no more than it was a surprise when Xena caught her after her Roman-slaying mission. Gabrielle didn’t even pretend to be surprised back then, when Xena dragged her away from Boadicea’s camp, when she pressed her up against a tree and told her that she wanted her, that she wanted all of her.

Amarice doesn’t do any of that. She doesn’t press up against her, doesn’t take her or demand to be taken; she just kisses her. Slow and careful, so unlike the way Xena does it, she finds the corner of her mouth, inches her way in until she catches her lips, until Gabrielle leans in too and lets herself reciprocate. Slow and so careful, like they’re both so fragile, like Gabrielle really is made of sugar.

Amarice doesn’t taste of sugar. She tastes like the rain, clean and wet and natural. Gabrielle closes her eyes, and wishes she could drown in her.

*

Later, when they’re both warmer and a little closer to dry, Amarice looks down at her and says, “Think you’re ready to talk about it now?”

Gabrielle winces. She knew the question would come up sooner or later, knew that it was only a matter of time before Amarice let her curiosity overpower her compassion, but the moment still lands a little harder than she expects. As close as they are now to the temple, and as closely as Gabrielle has been guarding her pain, it’s no real surprise that Amarice would choose now to bring it up again; they’re stuck in here, at least for the time being, and maybe she thinks that the close quarters, the warmth and the contact will offer some measure of comfort, a way for Gabrielle to ground herself while she talks it through.

Gabrielle doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it’s almost the opposite, that being so close makes her want to turn away and hide, that even just the idea of intimacy makes her feel violated all over again.

She wants to shake her head, to refuse as she has done so many times before, to say _‘it’s too complicated’_ or _‘it’s too hard’_ , even _‘it’s too painful’_ if that’s what it takes to make Amarice back down from this. She wants it so much that the wanting almost tears her apart, but even as she opens her mouth to say the words she finds that she can’t bring herself to say them.

It’s not just about her. The pain is hers, and so too are the memories, but Amarice has given so much of herself for this journey already; she’s given so much of herself to Gabrielle in the name of something she was never a part of, something she knows she’ll never truly understand, and it’s not fair that Gabrielle won’t even allow her a glimpse into what it all means. She deserves that; truthfully, she deserves more than that. If she’s going to be at her side when Gabrielle approaches that temple, if she’s going to go through it all with her, she deserves to know what _it_ really is.

It hurts to swallow down the fear and the lingering pain. It hurts to brace herself, to make ready to open up those wounds again, but not nearly as much as it hurts to break away from the warm blanket and Amarice’s warm embrace, to draw back and disappear into herself, to retreat and be alone.

“I don’t know.” She presses herself against the wall, a fair way out of reach. “But I can try.”

Amarice frowns a little. She seems to miss the contact almost as much as Gabrielle does. “You don’t have to,” she says, like she’s already regretting the question, realising a split-second too late that she doesn’t really want to know the answer she was so hungry for just a moment ago. “If it’s too hard, I mean…”

“It might be,” Gabrielle admits. That’s a little too honest, and it stings. “But I’ll have to face it anyway, when we get there. And you’ve come a long, long way with me. You deserve to know why.” She tries to smile, but she can’t; it’s more of a comfort than she’ll ever admit to know that with Amarice she doesn’t have to. “I owe you that much.”

“Hey.” Amarice finds the edge of the blanket with her fists. She holds there a moment, steadying herself against the urge to reach out and touch her instead. “Hey, no. _No_. You think I came all the way out here so you could owe me something? No. No, never. You hear me? You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do, though,” Gabrielle says. With more effort than she’d care to admit, she finds the smile she’s been striving for; if Amarice could see for even a second how much this hurts, she would take the question back, and the part of Gabrielle that is always so eager to prove itself doesn’t want the excuse to back down again like a coward. “But you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. We can talk about something else instead. I know lots of word games that can pass the time just as well until the rain stops.”

“By the gods, _no_!” Amarice is no better at smiling than Gabrielle is right now, but she tries as well. “Anything but that!”

Gabrielle chuckles, and inches away a little more; she’s as far back as she can get now while still being close enough to hold eye-contact in in the dark. She doesn’t know if she’s going to need the space or not, but the way she feels right now it seems likely. She feels so raw already, even the thought of being touched makes her want to peel the skin from her bones. She hasn’t said a word yet, not even one, and she can’t stand the thought of making contact with anything beyond the cave wall, the stone cold and wet against her skin.

She doesn’t expect it to comfort her like it does. The cold, the damp, the stone; it’s the opposite of everything that should be comfortable, but at the same time it’s the opposite of everything she felt in the temple. She thinks back to the heat and the fire and the blood on her hands, the horror and the terror and the _pain_ , and then she leans back until her head strikes the cave wall, cold and so, so solid, and she remembers how to breathe. If she needs grounding through this, the stone will do it far more effectively than Amarice’s arms or mouth.

“I don’t know where to start,” she says after a moment; the honesty rends her.

Amarice blinks a few times. She can’t seem to figure out whether to volunteer her own thoughts or stay quiet and let Gabrielle work through it on her own. After a few moments, seeming to sense that Gabrielle needs help more than moral support, she shrugs and says, “How about with the whole ‘hung from a cross’ thing? Because I’m still not sure I get that.”

Gabrielle shrugs too. That part seems so mundane by comparison to all the rest, but it’s as good a place to start as any.

“Caesar wanted my legs broken,” she explains. “He wanted to make a point to Xena, I think. He broke hers years ago. I’m not sure if you knew that. It’s… I think it’s a big part of why she hated him so much. Maybe even all of it.”

“I didn’t,” Amarice says, very softly. “Know it, I mean. She never…”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle swallows; already this is hard, and they’re not even talking about her yet. “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“I’ll bet,” Amarice mutters. “Pretty sure I wouldn’t either.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, splays her fingers against the wall. “He didn’t,” she says, after a few quiet moments. “Not to me. They stopped it… _she_ stopped it. Just came up out of nowhere and…” The memory hits a little harder than she expects it to; given the horrors that came later, that moment always feels so anti-climactic when she thinks of it, but now it strikes like a blow, like she always imagined that great big hammer would have felt against her bones. “She saved me. Xena, I mean. Showed up at the last second and…”

Amarice snorts a laugh. “She’s good at that, huh? Storming in to save the day, making some great big entrance. She’s real good at it.”

“Not good enough,” Gabrielle says; the words come out so sharply, so close to violent, that she almost doesn’t realise she’s the one who said it.

That cuts off the laughter, like a sword to exposed flesh. Amarice frowns at her, worry replacing the humour in a flash.

“Whoa,” she says. “Take it easy. I was just…”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle tries to do just that, struggles to bring herself back under control. It still feels so fresh, so close to the places where the scars still linger. “Sorry. It’s just… she wasn’t. Not when it really mattered. Not when it was _important_. By the gods, if I’d known what would come after, I would’ve taken the broken legs without a second thought. If I’d… if I’d just _known_ …”

She didn’t, though. Dizzy and nauseous from the height and the fear and the adrenaline, delirious with relief in the moment she saw Xena’s face, she couldn’t possibly have known that the worst was yet to come. With so much going on, so many conflicting things inside of her, the memory isn’t really clear, but she thinks she might have laughed, and she knows that she said something like _“we’ve got to work on timing”_.

Little did either of them know how true it was.

She tells Amarice that part, the part that came later. She tells her how she followed Khrafstar and his people to their temple, how Meridian smiled whenever she spoke, how they set up their damned ritual. The details sharpen as she says them, made somehow starker by being put to words for the first time. She tells her how Meridian stepped up to the altar, playing the role of cultist to the hilt, and how Khrafstar chuckled and frowned and pretended that it was all as new to him as it was to Gabrielle, that he wasn’t a part of it too. She believed him, of course; as gullible as she was back then, she believed everything. It all happened so fast, so overwhelming, and the one time she needed Xena to show up at the last second to save her, it didn’t happen.

“I killed her,” she whispers, because that’s the part that still sticks the deepest, a blade in her own belly so much like the one she drove through Meridian’s. “I thought I was helping him. I thought I was _saving_ him. I thought he was helpless, but he wasn’t. _I_ was.”

“Gabrielle…”

She shakes her head. “They used me.”

Even now, it feels like a lie. She still can’t process it. The idea that she might be something less than completely responsible for the first life she took, the idea that someone else forced her to do it, that the choice was never her own, that none of the things that happened there were of her own free will… she still can’t accept it. Even now, she can’t look back on her younger self and see the victim she knows she was.

It feels like cheating, using that word about herself. It feels like she’s laying claim to an experience that isn’t hers, like she’s making a falsehood out of other people’s realer pain, like she’s just making excuses for her own terrible actions. She feels so dirty, not like a real victim at all.

Amarice seems to sense her feelings. Some part of it, anyway, if not the whole. She doesn’t understand, can’t possibly understand how deep the pain and the shame still go, how long they’ve been tangled around her, but still she tries. Hands in her lap, clenching her jaw, she turns her face away so that Gabrielle won’t have to look at her.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay.”

It’s not, and Gabrielle tries to shake her head again. “They tricked me,” she says. ‘Tricked’ feels so much easier than ‘used’, so much less cruel. “They got inside my head, figured out how to make me react… and they did, and I killed… and I… and they… and _then_ …”

 _Then_ , of course, came something far worse.

She stammers, slurs, stumbles when she says it. She’s shivering, voice wobbling and wavering, like a child learning to speak for the first time, like she doesn’t understand the words coming out of her own mouth. She barely hears them at all, and she doesn’t let herself acknowledge that they might be true. It all sounds like nonsense; it _has to_ sound like nonsense, because the alternative is realising that it’s real, that it happened, that it happened to _her_.

It all sound so clinical when she says it aloud. That’s never happened to her before. When she writes, the words turn her experience to something new, something beautiful; mundane conversations become grand speeches under her quill, and brief bar brawls transform into epic battles. This is nothing like that, nothing like the way she documents Xena’s life, turning the woman she knows into a warrior fit for the legends. With Xena it’s easy; with herself it’s flat and futile.

She hears it, pointless and pathetic, misshaped and monotonous on her tongue. Mindless nouns like _‘fire’_ and _‘pain’_ and _‘fight’_ , vague, stupid adjectives like _‘helpless’_ and _‘suspended’_ and _‘scared’_. It doesn’t sound like one of her stories at all.

It’s true, though. Every word is the truth, but how can she expect a story like that to make any kind of sense to Amarice when she’s telling it like this? Amarice wasn’t there; she didn’t see or feel it or go through it, and she will never comprehend what it was like, and Gabrielle is not helping at all by making it sound like something so dissociated. She’s never felt so quite frozen inside herself, so unable to express what she means and feels and knows.

“It hurt.” That’s the only thing she can say. “It hurt and it hurt and it hurt. It hurt so much, and Xena wasn’t fast enough to save me.”

She’s in tears when she says it, but Amarice just stares at her like she’s heard something entirely different.

“I don’t get it,” she says. “She _was_. She _did_.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. Her back is stuck to the wall, soaked through with rain and sweat. “She didn’t.”

“Sure she did.” Amarice’s voice is like her expression, confused but desperately trying not to be; she knows how important this is, how real the pain, but she simply cannot understand. “She got you down, didn’t she? That whole pillar-of-fire flaming altar whatever. She got you down.” She gestures, helpless. “You’re still here, still in one piece, still whole and healthy and whatever. So you… you _were_ saved. You were—”

“I was _pregnant_ ,” Gabrielle whispers, and everything changes.

When she dares to look at her again, Amarice has gone deathly pale. Her whole body is shaking, eyes wide like she’s taken a blow, like she’s the one who was stabbed, who bled to death, who lost her blood innocence. Gabrielle feels rent almost to pieces at the sight of her; absurdly, ludicrously, she wants to reach across and make it better, even to take it all back if that’s what it takes to wash her pain from someone else’s face.

“Oh.” It’s a strangled, choked-off sob. “ _Oh_.”

Gabrielle wants to sob too; she wants to scream, she wants to be sick, she wants to _shatter_ , but all she can manage is, “Yeah.”

It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, maybe even the first time she’s truly realised it, and it shakes her like a punch from a god. _Oh,_ she thinks, as strangled inside herself as Amarice sounds. _Oh, so that’s what it was. Oh, so that’s what happened. Oh. Oh, no. Oh._ Her lungs burn, ribs split apart, back bowed and limbs shuddering; she wants to keep going, wants to take it back, deny it, reject it, but it’s so hard to breathe with a god’s fist inside her.

This is the hardest part, the part she hasn’t let herself think about in years. It’s become a kind of void, a desert inside her head, empty and hollow and so much safer for being that way. _It didn’t happen,_ she’s told herself, a thousand times or more. _Nothing did. You killed her, and then you were punished for it, and then Hope was born, and that’s all. Nothing else. Nothing at all._ She’s clung to that, held it tight and twisted it into its own kind of truth.

She twisted it into a kind of self-flagellation. It was her fault she was suffering afterwards. She was to blame. She brought it on herself. The dreams and the guilt and the nausea, the pains in her stomach, the banshees and their ominous, impossible whispers and, worst of all, the moment Xena told her what they meant. _“I think you’re pregnant,”_ she said, so cool and matter-of-fact, and Gabrielle denied it until she couldn’t any more, until she felt it for herself, the movement and the shifting and the _pain_ , until she looked down and knew that it was true, that there really was something growing inside of her.

 _“I’m being punished,”_ she said to Xena when she found out. _“Something is making me pay.”_ Again and again and again, she said it. The pregnancy was a punishment. It had to be. Her whole world shrank down until there was nothing else left in it at all, until that lie was the only truth she had left. _I’m being punished. I did a terrible thing, and now I’m being punished._

She had to believe that. She had to believe it was all her doing. She inflicted all those things on herself. The pain, the guilt, even the pregnancy. She had to believe that she was the only one responsible, because if she wasn’t…

 _No,_ she thinks, even now, and shakes it off.

Hindsight taught her differently, but it’s still a struggle to accept. Hindsight, and taking more than just one life, has taught her again and again and again that the world doesn’t end with the blood she spills.

The horrors that came later are her burdens to bear. Solan’s death and Hope’s, the shattering of her relationship with Xena… those mistakes will be with her for the rest of her life. Her blind desperation, her _need_ to believe that something good could come out of the terrible things that happened in the temple, that she was still capable of creating something good even after all the pain she’d been through… understandable though it was, it was her undoing. It was Solan’s undoing, and Xena’s, and her own, and _yes_ , it was her fault; she knows that now.

Everything that happened after Hope’s birth was her fault. She won’t ever turn away from that. But _Hope_ was not.

She convinced herself easily that the pregnancy was a punishment, then when it was over she just as easily convinced herself the baby was a promise. She wasn’t a monster, wasn’t the spawn of an evil god; she was Gabrielle’s _child_ , her _daughter_. She was a tiny, innocent baby, and Gabrielle needed to believe that she was a source of goodness and light. She was living proof that everything that happened in the temple was for a reason, that she, Gabrielle, who had done such a terrible thing there, was still capable of creating something good. She had to believe that. Her whole identity depended on it.

Not that it mattered in the end. A few hours later Hope had grown and taken her first life. Just hours into her existence she snuffed out someone else’s, and even now Gabrielle needs to believe it was because she didn’t know her own strength. Years later, she still believes that.

Xena didn’t. She didn’t believe it, didn’t listen, didn’t even bother to hear Gabrielle’s side of things. She didn’t even try to understand why this was so important to her; Gabrielle had never felt so betrayed in her life. Xena turned on her, turned on _them_ , and all she could think about then was protecting her child, keeping her daughter safe, sheltering her last little Hope from Xena and everyone else who would hurt her just for existing. She had to shelter them both from a world so desperate to tell them they were something evil.

Hope came from Gabrielle. She was _her_ child. If she was evil, that could only mean Gabrielle was too.

It was all she could think about. Even with the evidence right there in front of her, even with Xena shaking her and shouting at her and telling her the truth over and over and over, still she wouldn’t hear it. She was still in so much pain, so bruised and battered inside, so tainted by the temple, and it was too soon to think about any of it, too soon to think that there might have been worse things to worry about than spilling blood, that she might have been used for something far worse than a bloody sacrifice. Xena never said a thing about it; Gabrielle was so broken, so lost inside herself, and all Xena had to say was _“your child is a monster.”_

Of course, she was right in the end. Time and loss taught them both that truth in the worst way, but by the time Gabrielle learned it Hope had already grown again and killed Xena’s son. By the time she was finally forced to face the things that had happened to her, the consequences _were_ her fault.

She remembers telling Ephiny about Britannia. Before she knew that Hope was alive, that she was _there_ , before she had any idea of the awful things her daughter was about to do, she told Ephiny about her.

She didn’t have a choice. There were so many children in the Amazon village, or so it seemed, and Ephiny noticed the way she was flinching and swallowing back tears whenever she saw them. Solan was growing so fast, and so was little Xenan, and all Gabrielle could think about when she saw was the fact that _her_ child was gone, that Xena had ripped her Hope away when she had none.

She imagined Hope playing with the village children, wondering what she might look like at Xenan’s age, or at Solan’s. She wondered what colours might be her favourites, what sorts of games she would like to play, and when Ephiny asked what was wrong, Gabrielle told her the only truth she knew.

_”I got into a very bad situation…”_

It was the truth, deeper than she knew even back then, but it wasn’t the part that mattered. She couldn’t let it be. She couldn’t let anyone, even Ephiny, see that tainted place inside of her, and so she rushed on, let herself whisper her child’s name one more time.

 _“That’s what she was,”_ she said. _“She was my hope that, despite everything that had happened, this child was worth it all.”_

She didn’t tell Ephiny the details. She remembers all too clearly the look on her face, the terrible implication that she couldn’t bring herself to voice. There aren’t many reasons why a person would go from _“I got into a very bad situation”_ to _“I had a child”_ in a single breath, and not many people would make the automatic leap to dark gods and blood sacrifice. Ephiny didn’t say the word aloud, perhaps out of respect, but Gabrielle knew what she was thinking, and she didn’t bother to correct her. Why split hairs, after all, when she felt so split open that it might as well have been true?

“Her name was Hope.”

She says it again now, an echo of the past as she looks up to find Amarice instead of Ephiny.

“Hope?” Amarice repeats, breathless.

Gabrielle nods. “But that’s not what she was.”

She’s never said that before either. She’s never really let herself weight the thought, much less accept it as true. It’s always been _‘she was’_ , as though things might have turned out differently if Xena hadn’t intervened, if Gabrielle hadn’t been forced to send her newborn child away, if only someone, somewhere had understood. It’s always been her failure, her mistake; she’s never quite managed to let go of that shred of faith, the part of her that believed _she_ failed _Hope_ , that it wasn’t the reverse, that the unnatural spawn of a demonic god could ever be anything other than evil.

Now, for the first time, back here where it all began, she does let it go. Hindsight has taught her that as well, and just as she was forced to accept, up there on Caesar’s cross, the inevitability of Alti’s vision, she accepts now too that Hope was just as inevitable, that all the love in the world would never have been enough to change the nature of Dahak’s child. How could she ever expect her naïveté and innocence to override a god?

Then again, perhaps there’s a reason for that. Even now, she’s not sure she’s truly accepted that simple, terrible truth: that Hope was _his_ as much as hers.

Looking up, grounding herself in the present, in where she is and who she’s become, she finds Amarice staring at her with tears in her eyes. She looks stricken, struck, and she doesn’t seem to know what to say. Well, no wonder, Gabrielle thinks. What does anyone say to a story like this?

Not much, apparently. Amarice wets her lips, visibly shaken, and whispers, “That’s a lot.”

That’s all. Just _‘a lot’_. She doesn’t say _‘that’s a lot to take in’_ or _‘that’s a lot for one person to deal with’_. She just says _‘a lot’_ , and somehow that’s all they need.

Gabrielle forces a smile, wills them both to see that she has grown since the last time she was here, that she’s changed and matured, that she is finally admitting to things she couldn’t even conceive of back then. She’s no longer the Gabrielle who hung from a cross and waited for Xena to save her; she’s the Gabrielle who hung from a cross for trying to save Xena.

“Yeah,” she says again. The smile doesn’t stick, but she doubts Amarice expected it to. At least she tried. “Yeah, it is a lot. It… I think it’s more than I thought it was at the time.”

“I’ll bet.” Amarice can’t smile either, but Gabrielle can see that she understands. “Can I… is it okay if I touch you?”

It feels strange, being asked. Xena never does, and Gabrielle has never really thought much about it; so often, touch is the only way they communicate. Words don’t come easily to Xena; she struggles to find the right ones when Gabrielle needs to hear them and she struggles just as much with listening to Gabrielle’s when their roles are reversed. They don’t work for her they way they do for Gabrielle; they never have, and they’ve both long since learned that the press of a hand, a hug or brush of lips against cheek or mouth or forehead can say what a million bardic scrolls never will.

It doesn’t matter what’s happened, what either one of them has been through; the response is always the same, and always instinctive. Xena never asks _‘can I?’_ before she reaches out to pull Gabrielle into her arms, and she never asks _‘is this okay?’_ before she leans in to kiss her lips or the top of her head. Xena has never asked, and Gabrielle has learned from her example; she’s never thought of asking Xena’s permission, either, when she offers the same in turn. It simply comes naturally to them both.

Ephiny never asked either, she realises for the first time. Like with Xena, it was never anything she thought about, but looking at Amarice now the difference is obvious. Gabrielle wonders how stark and strange things must have been in Amarice’s tribe, how different it must have been to Ephiny’s. Ephiny always used to look at her like she was whole, even when she wasn’t; she always looked at her like she knew she could offer comfort but not salvation. She knew, in a way that even Gabrielle didn’t, that she would grow and recover on her own, but why leave her to it when a touch or a kiss could help her along?

Amarice isn’t looking at her like that at all now. She’s looking at her like she’s afraid she’ll shatter into a thousand pieces under even a hint of contact. Gabrielle is afraid of many things here in Britannia, but she will never be afraid of being touched by someone she knows and trusts.

“Of course,” she hears herself say. “You don’t have to ask.”

“I think I do,” Amarice whispers. She’s very pale. “Gabrielle…”

She scrambles into the space between them, and finds Gabrielle’s face with her hands. There are tears trembling in her eyes when she finds Gabrielle’s, questing, like she’s desperate to find the woman she thought she knew, the girl she thought was Xena’s sidekick. The look on her face is torn, horror and disbelief and a great well of sorrow when she recognises her friend and her queen behind all that pain.

 _This can’t be you,_ she seems to be thinking. _I know you. I’ve travelled with you, I’ve fought with you, I’ve kissed you. Things like that don’t happen to people like you._

Gabrielle covers Amarice’s hands with her own, feels the cracks along the knuckles. “It’s all right,” she says, as though she can convince either one of them. “It’s all right.”

“Is it?” Amarice’s hands shake with her voice. “Are you?”

Gabrielle thinks of the temple. She wonders what it will look like when they get there, if the sight of it will make her feel as vulnerable and violated as the thought of it does. Maybe it won’t; maybe it will seem small and stupid after all this time, a harmless shadow of the nightmare she remembers. She feels that way sometimes when she goes back to Poteidaia; she and Xena have travelled so far, have seen so much. The little village that was once her whole world seems almost meaningless next to all that endless wonder. She can only pray that the place that wrought so much pain and misery will feel the same way.

She looks at Amarice, by her side no matter what she finds. _“Are you all right?”_ she asks, but Gabrielle can tell that she really means _“is this all right?”_. It’s not hard to find an answer to either question when she sees the tears in her eyes, when she feels the affection shaking in her fingertips, the warmth and compassion. The answer is an honest and easy one, but still she chooses her words with care.

“I hope so.”

*

The rain eases up after a few hours.

Amarice keeps glancing back at the cave mouth, obvious even when she’s trying to be subtle, but she doesn’t say anything about it. It’s struck her very hard, Gabrielle can tell, to learn just how deep the wounds from the temple go, and to realise for the first time how much it really is going to hurt, being there again.

Until now, Gabrielle suspects Amarice has been coasting through the journey wondering how bad this temple really is. She can’t exactly blame her for that; she wasn’t with them last time and neither Gabrielle nor Xena have been particularly forthcoming with details. That’s understandable too, given what happened here, but all Amarice knows is what she’s seen with her own eyes, and it’s easy to understand how someone who has watched her friends come back from a slow, torturous death might question how anything can be worse than that.

Honestly, if she hadn’t lived it herself, Gabrielle would probably be wondering the same thing. She doesn’t have that blessing, though, and she never will. Dying was easy; the pain was awful but Alti had prepared her for that, and she has never been afraid to die.

She’d been close to death twice before Caesar, and both by her own hand. The first, after Solan, holding a poisoned waterskin to her lips, flicking her tongue out without even realising she was doing it, imagining for just a moment that she could taste it; it terrified her, the idea that it might be the last thing she tasted, so she didn’t. She was afraid then, but the second time she was not. Throwing herself into that endless pit with her daughter in her arms, she was so much braver than she ever imagined she could be.

It’s fitting, she thinks, that both times she almost died were with Hope in her arms… and it’s fitting too, if in a more tragic way, that she wasn’t the only one who survived.

She’s learned too many times that there are worse things than dying, worse things than finding herself in Paradise or the Elysian Fields, worse things than falling into Hell and tasting all its tortures. Amarice might never learn that lesson herself — Gabrielle hopes that she won’t — but she’s seeing it now in someone else, realising perhaps for the first time in her life that other people’s experiences run deeper than her own. It’s understandable that she would need a little time to process such a thing.

Gabrielle takes the initiative for them both. “Weather’s better.”

“You sure?”

The question comes a little too quickly, and much too eagerly; she’s been waiting for this, Gabrielle can tell, and can’t help admiring her restraint.

“See for yourself,” she says.

Amarice glances back at the cave mouth, feigning curiosity, as though she hasn’t been staring in that direction for the last hour. “Well, sure, it _looks_ that way, but uh… I don’t really trust this whole ‘Britannia weather’ stuff. You always think it’s gonna stop raining, but then it never, ever stops raining.”

“Sure it does,” Gabrielle says with false brightness. “When Caesar was ordering his men to break my legs, the sun was in my eyes.”

She means it lightly — it’s not exactly a joke, but she is trying to leaven the moment a little — but it doesn’t come out that way at all. Her voice is too rough, her lips trembling too much, and the words fall flat. Amarice turn even paler than she already is, staring slack-jawed and horrified, like she halfway expects Gabrielle to drop down dead all over again just for having said it.

“Are you… is that… _what_?”

“Sorry.” Gabrielle tries to look chagrin, though it doesn’t work any better than the feint at lightness. “That sounded less morbid in my head.”

Funny, she thinks, how often she finds herself saying that. Not quite so funny, however, is the fact that Amarice suddenly looks like she’s been punched in the face.

“Okay,” she manages, sounding very brittle. “So you wanna risk this weather thing or not?”

Gabrielle sighs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “We can probably make it by nightfall if the weather holds. But then, if it doesn’t, we might end up stuck again. And don’t know if I…”

_I don’t know if I can face it yet._

She doesn’t say the words, but Amarice hears them just the same. She’s smart enough by now to keep it to herself, but there is something very telling in the way she leans in and says, “Hey.”

It’s such a frivolous, silly little word but it wraps itself around Gabrielle’s heart like something meaningful, and it helps her to dig down deep and find the courage she needs.

“We can make it,” she says again, and hopes that this time Amarice will finish for her.

She does. She’s getting so good at that. “Then maybe we should?” She pitches it like a question, like the choice is still Gabrielle’s, though they both know better. Gabrielle can’t say the words for herself, and so Amarice has to say them for her. “Give it a try, anyway. I mean… um… we can stop again later if it gets… if, uh…”

“If the weather gets bad again,” Gabrielle says.

Amarice blushes shyly, ducks her head for a moment, then nods with a little too much enthusiasm. “Yeah. If the _weather_ gets bad again.”

They both know that’s not what she means, of course, but why twist the knife? Gabrielle is aware of enough of her waning strength, the shakiness in her limbs and her courage, and Amarice knows better than to embarrass her by making it into a point. Neither of them are like Xena; they’re both so much younger, both inexperienced in the fine art of keeping their weaknesses on the inside, and Amarice understands, perhaps better than anyone Gabrielle has ever met, just how humiliating those weaker moments can be when they’re on display in front of someone stronger.

Gabrielle wants to thank her. For the words she didn’t say, for the ones she did, for being the one to make the decision they both know needed to be made. For being here with her. None of these things come easily to her, or to Gabrielle, but Amarice has taken them to heart as though both their lives depend on it. She never looks at Gabrielle like Xena does, like she’s something delicate and precious; she looks at her like she’s some _one_ , weak in the moment but not by her nature. She looks at her like they’re family, not in blood like Lila and her parents back in Poteidaia, not in body and soul like Xena, but something else entirely, something like Amazons. It’s a breed of kinship all its own, closer and further away at the same time.

Amarice is watching her, chewing on her lip like she’s afraid. She doesn’t know if this is the right thing, Gabrielle can tell. She can’t figure out whether she’s helping her towards a goal she’s too weak to reach for herself or whether she’s forcing her into a dark, terrifying corner, driving her back towards the nightmares that still haunt her. She is so, so afraid of doing the wrong thing, and Gabrielle chides herself for not making it clearer that she isn’t, that she hasn’t. Not once, not ever. Not yet.

“I trust the weather,” Gabrielle says.

What she means, of course, is _‘I trust you’_ , but they are so alike and Gabrielle knows just as well as Amarice which words she should never say.

*

Back outside, the air is cold.

The horse is none the worse for having waited out the storm; just like Amarice said, he seems well accustomed to the strange Britannia weather, and he nickers impatiently when they emerge, as if to say _‘where in the world have you two been?’_.

Gabrielle spends a long, long time fussing over him, patting his neck and brushing his mane, adjusting the saddle and checking that their things are still in order. She’s procrastinating, putting off the inevitable for as long as she can, and apparently she’s not nearly as subtle about it as she thinks she is, because Amarice rolls her eyes and takes the initiative for her. She doesn’t hesitate, hopping up onto the horse’s back without prompting, shuffling a little to try and make herself comfortable, then turning to roll her eyes at Gabrielle.

“Come on, slowpoke,” she says, leaning down to offer her a hand up. “We’re burning daylight.”

Gabrielle doesn’t say ‘thank you’, but she thinks it.

Blessedly, the weather holds. It takes a while, but the clouds clear a little as the afternoon wears on, breaking to let the sun through; the ground is no less treacherous, but with better visibility they make good time. Gabrielle has never been a particularly strong rider, but Boadicea picked out a good horse to balance her; he’s intuitive, intelligent, and his confidence puts Gabrielle at ease in a way that Argo never does. If he trusts her in the saddle, maybe that means there’s something worth trusting in her after all.

It’s maybe a couple of hours later that Gabrielle recognises the spot on the horizon where she knows the temple waits and feels the world freeze all around her. The horse is still in motion, hooves tearing up the grass beneath her, but Gabrielle has never felt so still in her life.

They’re not quite close enough that she can make out the place, but of course she doesn’t need to. This place has tainted her dreams for so long that she’d know where it was even if she were blindfolded. Her imagination, always her best friend and worst enemy, kicks itself into overdrive, plaguing her with visions of those silhouetted stones, the strange, preternatural shape the rubble took when the temple fell. She can’t quite see it yet, but in her mind’s eye she does.

Amarice must sense the reaction in her; she might not quite realise what that blurry silhouette in the distance is, but she’s pressed tight against Gabrielle’s back and she couldn’t possibly fail to notice the quickening of her pulse, the way her heart is suddenly beating almost out of her chest. As close as they are, they can feel every shift in each other’s bodies, can feel the way their limbs and muscles shift as the horse adjusts to the terrain, the way they move in rhythm with the motion. They’re so attuned, she can’t possibly miss a reaction like this, and Gabrielle is in no condition to pretend she’s not panicking. She couldn’t hide it right now even if she tried.

“Okay.” It’s barely audible, a whisper all but lost to the wind, but then the horse is slowing, pulled to a stop, and Gabrielle senses rather than sees the way Amarice shifts where she sits. “Okay. Come on…”

Gabrielle opens her mouth. She doesn’t really know what she wants to say, but it doesn’t matter; no sound comes out. The world pitches dizzyingly for a few seconds, spinning and turning itself upside-down, and when it rights itself she finds that she’s on the ground again, on her knees in the grass and staring up at a very, very tall Amarice.

Amarice kneels as well, dropping very slowly into a crouch at her side. There’s a kind of restraint in the way she moves, like she’s approaching a wounded animal or an easily-startled child; she cups Gabrielle’s face with one hand, thumb brushing the curve of her jaw, and she takes her wrist with the other, sliding the metal guard off and finding the pulse underneath. Gabrielle watches her count out the beats, watches her eyes go wide.

“You breathing okay?” Amarice asks, not bothering to hide the worry. “You gotta put your head between your knees or something?”

Gabrielle chokes on a wet laugh. She’s still a little dazed, not sure whether she toppled from the horse herself or whether Amarice sensed the imminent breakdown and hauled her down for her own safety.

“I’m fine,” she manages, rasping but blithely optimistic. “You’re overreacting.”

Amarice snorts her derision. “Tell that to your heartbeat,” she says. She looks very upset, and that tells Gabrielle all she needs to know.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Gabrielle says again. It comes out harder this time, more for her own sake than Amarice’s. “Your heart would be racing too if you’d been through what I went through here.” She forces herself to stand, locks her legs underneath her. “Find a good spot to tether the horse, and let’s go.”

It’s probably not the brightest idea, but she doesn’t have much choice. The small part of her that’s absorbed a little of Xena’s reason and logic knows that she should take a moment to steady herself, to check her breathing and slow her pounding heart, but she knows that she can’t afford to. If she stops now, even for a second, she’ll never find the strength to start up again. They’re so close, _so close_ to the place that’s haunted her for so long. If she stops for just a second, she’ll surrender to the part of her that wants to flee. 

Amarice, not seeing any of that, doesn’t move at all. Though she doesn’t stand, he’s still holding Gabrielle’s wrist, fingers firm but not especially strong. “Come on,” she says, tugging lightly. “Sit back down for a bit, huh? An extra minute isn’t gonna—”

“Yes, it _will_.” She doesn’t need to hear the end of that sentence. “Amarice, if we don’t go now… if I don’t do this _now_ …”

Miraculously, that seems to be enough. Like always, Amarice sees the things Gabrielle knows Xena wouldn’t if she was here in her place, and instead of pushing this, driving her back down by force, demanding that she rest or breathe or do any one of a thousand other things that would hurt more than they would help, she rises to her feet, leaning in close to offer a shoulder if Gabrielle needs one.

“Okay,” she says softly. “I don’t think it’s smart, but okay. If you’re really sure that’s what you want.”

“I am,” Gabrielle says. She doesn’t lean on her shoulder. “I have to do this.”

Amarice nods. She lingers for a moment, making sure that Gabrielle is steady, that she can stand by herself, then grudgingly moves away.

The horse is obedient, seeming to sense the tension in the air; he’s not particularly fond of Amarice, not like he is of Gabrielle, but he obeys her now just the same, following her to the shade of a strong-looking tree. It’ll offer a good shelter if the weather turns again, Gabrielle thinks, though it’s pretty obvious that Amarice doesn’t care about that at all. The horse can drown for all she cares right now; she’s not here for him, she’s here for Gabrielle, and Gabrielle can see how much all of this is hurting her.

Amarice isn’t used to feeling deeply for people. She’s not used to caring as much as she clearly does here, not just for Gabrielle, but for her own part in this, knowing as she does that she’s been invited into something private, something so personal it transcends words, a moment that should have been Xena’s, but can’t be. It upsets her and frightens her, the weight of the trust that’s been placed on her shoulders. Gabrielle wants to feel guilty about that, but it touches her too much.

They walk slowly. Amarice sets the pace with long, even steps and Gabrielle is too busy fighting her own instincts to try and push for something faster. In one moment her legs want to turn around and run, in the next they want to turn to water. Every nerve in her body is screaming that this is a bad idea, that she should never have come back here, that she needs to jump up onto that gods-forsaken horse and ride back to Boadicea’s camp as fast as she can. The shadow on the horizon inches closer, step by step and breath by breath, and it’s not long at all before it’s not just a shadow at all, before it’s solid and visible and _real_ , before—

“Whoa.”

It’s Amarice who says it, but the heart in her voice resonates right down to Gabrielle’s soul.

The sun is starting its descent now, a blazing orange ball of heat and light that hovers over the place and casts the rocks into bold relief. It ignites the sky like a flame, throws itself onto the strange alien shapes, the stone figures and forms that the explosion made of the temple. It makes it look like something new, like a work of art carved out from the earth, and if Gabrielle didn’t know better, if she didn’t know exactly how it came into being, she might think it was beautiful. The sun makes it look that way, and seeing it reflected in Amarice’s eyes is an ache so deep it makes her want to cry.

There’s so much blood buried beneath those stones, but the sun is so powerful, so potent that it blinds anyone who searches for it. Gabrielle wonders if that’s why they chose here to build their temple.

She turns away from the sight, finds Amarice instead. She cups her face with her hands, gazes deep into her eyes. Somehow that vision of sun-soaked stone is less painful when she’s watching it through a veil of someone else’s tears, through a wall of emotion not her own, when she sees her trauma through Amarice’s eyes. She uses her as a mirror, a lens to refract the most painful parts, to soften the sunlight until it’s beautiful again. It hurts so much… but _oh_ , what a weight it lifts from her to know that the tears aren’t all her own, that she isn’t weeping alone.

Amarice is touching her face now too, fingertips wet along her cheekbones, her jaw, her lips. She’s breathless; she is everything.

She kisses her, slow and sweet, mouth half-open like she can wash away all the hurt of this place by taking her back to a place that didn’t hurt at all, back and back to a moment when she laughed. She kisses her with purpose, with promise. Without a word, her mouth says, _‘I’m here. I’m here and I’m with you and I’m not like Xena.’_

Drowning in it, in her, in this and here and _them_ , in the horror on the horizon and the moment that holds her suspended above it, Gabrielle wonders when ‘not like Xena’ became something she wanted.

*


	11. Chapter 11

*

The temple isn’t abandoned any more.

Gabrielle tenses at the sight of them, strange, silhouetted figures with shrouded faces and heavy robes. They keep their distance, not even venturing close enough to touch the stone, but there’s a strange kind of reverence in the way they circle it, worship in the way they walk and wander and watch. It makes Gabrielle think of Meridian and Khrafstar, makes her remember the twisted, tainted ritual they called ‘worship’.

It frightens her. She doesn’t want to admit that, but it does. These strangers… their robes aren’t the same — nothing about them is the same — but worship is worship, and the sight of it here of all places brings it all screaming back.

 _Who are you?,_ she thinks. _Why are you here? What are you doing? Don’t you know this place is a waking nightmare? Don’t you know what happened here?_

She doesn’t realise that she’s close to another breakdown, that she’s squeezing Amarice’s hand tight enough to bruise. She doesn’t realise anything at all until she hears Amarice’s breath catch in her ear, until she pulls away and takes her by the shoulders, until she says “Hey,” again and again and again, until Gabrielle hears and remembers how to breathe.

She swallows. “Sorry.”

Amarice shrugs off the apology. “It’s okay,” she says. “Take it easy.”

Gabrielle tries. She clenches and unclenches her fists in rhythm with her breathing, and tries to remember the way Eli taught her to find an inner stillness, to forgive and to feel without thinking. Dahak is gone now, she reminds herself; whatever these people want from his temple, they won’t find him there. They can draw the blood from any innocent they like, but they will never do to anyone else what they did to her. They will never, ever, _ever_ —

“You shouldn’t be here!” she screams, and it’s only once the words are out that she realises she’s not taking it easy at all, that it’s not Eli’s breathing caught in her chest right now, but something else entirely, something violent and dangerous.

It doesn’t sound like her voice. It’s a strange, shattered thing that comes from very far away, and she doesn’t recognise any part of herself in the way she howls, the way she charges forward, the way she lunges for the first body she can reach.

In a heartbeat, she has it — him, her, _it_ — by the shoulders, shaking so violently that she can hear the rattling in its bones and teeth. _Not hard enough,_ a part of her thinks, and she shakes it again before the rest of her can catch up and realise _this is not me_.

“You shouldn’t be here!” she shouts again. Her hands are iron-hard, powerful, but her voice is barely a breath away from shattering.

The body under her hands doesn’t even try to break free. “Who are you?” it asks, and the voice makes Gabrielle’s blood run cold.

It’s a woman, she realises thickly. She’s startled, understandably, but her voice is as soft and calm as Meridian’s was. The sound of it makes Gabrielle scream again, makes her lose what little coherence she might still have left.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Again, again. She’ll say it a thousand times if that’s what it takes. “Haven’t you people done enough?”

She shakes her a few more times, rougher. The hood falls from the woman’s face, exposing her features to the dying sunlight, and Gabrielle falls to her knees, as struck by the sight as she was by the sound, helpless against the memories that surge up inside of her.

It’s not a perfect likeness, this woman and the one she killed, but it’s close enough to strike, to burn, and the differences are washed away in the haze of memory and imagination. For a moment that lasts years, all Gabrielle sees is Meridian.

Just like her, this woman is a canvas of chiaroscuro. Her skin is dark, her hair darker, but her eyes are impossibly pale. Gabrielle remembers Meridian’s, remembers seeing her own face reflected in them, the shock turning to horror as the blood spread below. She remembers the way she smiled, the flicker of joy on her face before she fell backwards. She remembers those pale eyes going wide, remembers the way they rolled back, never to open again.

It’s Gabrielle whose eyes roll back now, and it’s Gabrielle who falls. She crashes to her knees so hard that the impact jolts through her whole body, quivering little shocks that rend the speech from her throat. She’s released the woman’s shoulders, but her hands are still clenched in front of her as though she’s still holding on with all her strength, fingers tangled into talons but clinging to nothing, and her mouth is open in a shriek that echoes over and over and over in her head.

 _You shouldn’t be here,_ she thinks. Again and again, she thinks it. _You should be dead… you should be…_

“Gabrielle!”

Amarice’s voice is a savage thing, sharp like the ring of steel on leather, undisciplined like her hand as she draws her sword and holds it up. It carves a path through Gabrielle’s thoughts, through her memories, carves a path through the past and shows her the way back to the present, to the woman in front of her who is not Meridian, who only bears a passing resemblance to her.

She shakes her head, vision blurring a little, and then Amarice is there in body as well as voice, standing between them like a wall, shielding her and protecting her and doing what they both know Xena would do if she was here.

“It’s okay, Gab,” she says, eyes on the woman who looks like Meridian. “You—”

“Who _are_ you?” The woman sounds nothing like Meridian now. She’s angry, hard in a way Meridian never was, a way she couldn’t be when her role relied so heavily on being so deceptively sweet. “What do you—”

“Hey!” Amarice lunges forward, instinctive and lit up. She presses the edge of her blade to the woman’s neck, a threat far more than a warning. “Don’t you touch her. Don’t you talk to her.” She doesn’t look away, not even for a second, but her whole demeanour changes when she shifts on her heels and says, “Gabrielle?”

Gabrielle thinks for a moment of blurting out _‘don’t kill her’_ , but she doesn’t. She’s still not entirely sure that the woman isn’t dead already, that she’s not staring up at a ghost. Besides, even if she’s not what she’s thinking about, even if she really is a different person entirely, she’s not sure that makes it any better; why would anyone come to this temple, if not to torture innocent girls?

She tries to stand, to get her legs back under her, but they refuse to move at all.

“Dahak’s dead,” she forces out, willing her voice to rise stronger than her body. It only partly succeeds. “Your _god_ is dead. Why are you here?”

“Our god?” The woman hisses through her teeth as Amarice presses her sword closer to the skin. “You’re mistaken.”

Gabrielle shakes her head, unhinged and beyond reason; if there’s a grain of truth in the words, she’s too far gone to search for it. All she sees is what she remembers, and all she cares about is the pain it caused.

“He’s dead,” she says again. “His child is dead. His grandchild is dead. Everything…” Her voice breaks. Amarice’s shoulders twitch a little, but she doesn’t turn around. “Everything this temple ever stood for is _dead_.”

“Uh…” Amarice hesitates, clearly not sure what’s going on here. Both sides are as unfamiliar to her as each other, and all she really has to go by is Gabrielle’s irrational flight of violence. “Are you sure she’s… I mean…”

Gabrielle clenches her jaw. “ _Amarice_.”

“Okay, okay. Just asking.” She glances briefly down at Gabrielle, then back up at the woman who isn’t Meridian, who might yet be like her. “All right, lady. Who are you and what’re you doing hanging around some dead god’s dead temple? Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”

“ _She_ assaulted _me_ ,” the woman points out, quite calmly. She’s still annoyed, but the anger has dissolved somewhat, perhaps a little moved by Gabrielle’s obvious distress. “I’m sorry she’s upset, but it’s hardly my fault. I’ve never seen either of you before in my life.”

Gabrielle tries to stand again. This time she mostly manages it, if only by leaning on Amarice’s shoulder. She is so frightened and so angry at the same time. She doesn’t know what to think, or whether she should trust herself to think at all.

“Why are you here?” she asks, and doesn’t apologise. “This temple is… _was_ … Dahak’s.”

“Dahak?” She frowns, as though she’s never heard the name before either, as though all of these things are strange new ideals. Gabrielle doesn’t understand; how can anyone come to this place and not know what happened here? “You speak of the evil one?”

“Oh, yeah.” She shudders at the word. “That’s one word for him.”

That seems to ignite something, a spectre of the same frightened fury that Gabrielle still feels simmering inside of her, the horror and the hate that goes hand in hand with this place. Not-Meridian surges forward then, with a cry; she shoves Amarice aside as though she’s no obstacle at all, and doesn’t even flinch when her blade bites into the skin. Blood beads on her throat, almost black in the setting sunlight, but she ignores it, focusing in on Gabrielle until they’re less than a breath apart.

“What do you know of it?” she demands, grabbing her by the wrist. “You’re one of His followers?”

“No.” The word comes out as a sob, and the next thing she knows she’s back on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest and fighting fresh tears. “No. Never. Not… _no_.”

Amarice crouches, pulls her in close and cradles her like Xena did all those years ago. Her chin rests on the top of Gabrielle’s head, the steel of her sword pressed flat against her back, and she keeps her eyes burning holes through not-Meridian.

“This place did bad stuff to her,” she says, and doesn’t offer anything more.

Not-Meridian makes a strange, perplexed sound. “I see,” she says. Apparently that’s what she wanted to hear, because the rage is gone from her now, and only that sickening, too-familiar sweetness is left. “Then we’re not opposed after all.”

“Huh?” Amarice hunches over Gabrielle, achingly protective. If she were Xena, Gabrielle might get angry, but she’s not, and it doesn’t feel so much like weakness with someone who didn’t fail her the last time. “Can’t you people talk normally?”

A chuckle from above. Huddled on the ground, the sound makes Gabrielle feel very small; it makes the terror tighten again inside her chest, and that makes Amarice lean in closer. She doesn’t speak, but Gabrielle can feel the promise humming under her skin, warmth in the places where their bodies connect. _I’m here,_ she doesn’t say. _I’m here, and we’re here. This isn’t then, it’s now, and we’re both here, and it’s okay._

Gabrielle breathes her in. Amarice smells nothing like Xena; she smells of rain and leather and fur. She smells so much like Ephiny did, those few times she comforted her with her mouth and her body, and that pours some power back into her legs, her arms, into her whole body. It fills her throat with words, and floods her with the strength to say them.

She looks up, catches her breath, finds the face of this woman who so resembles someone else. “You’re not one of them?” she asks in a terrified, child-like whisper. “You’re not…”

“No more than you are.” She smiles, warm and genuine and not like Meridian at all, and holds out a hand. “Come. Let us talk.”

*

There are about a dozen of them.

They call themselves a name that Gabrielle can’t pronounce, and follow a pantheon of gods she’s never heard of. They’re definitely not the Greek immortals that she knows so well, but they don’t sound much like Boadicea’s gods either.

Years ago, before she came to this place and found herself punished for it, Gabrielle would have been overflowing with questions; she would have wanted to know everything about these people, their gods, their reasons for coming here of all places. She would have been so eager, so curious; now she’s shivering and silent. She doesn’t want to learn anything any more, and she’s had more than her fill of strange gods and the strangers who worship them.

Amarice stays close to her, one hand on the hilt of her sword at all times; though the strangers are nothing but civil, she never sheathes it and she never lowers her guard. She stands in front of Gabrielle, shoulders squared like a bodyguard, standing strong like she did in their early days together, back when Gabrielle would not pick up a weapon and Xena was always telling Amarice to protect her. Amarice was reluctant about it then, sullen and moody; she couldn’t understand why her skills were wasted on a queen who wouldn’t even try and defend herself. Things are different now, though, and she takes the task upon herself like it’s something sacred.

 _If these ones want you,_ she says with her sword arm, _they’ll have to go through me first._

Gabrielle doesn’t know what to think about any of this. Not-Meridian, who bears a name as incomprehensible as her people’s, tells her that the site of Dahak’s temple has become a place of peace, of reverence for life; they come here to celebrate his death, not to praise the being he was. They say a great many things that Gabrielle might once have believed, but now it all just makes her feel ill.

She remembers lying in Xena’s arms as Hope grew inside her. She remembers saying those same words herself: _“I was going to revere life… bring peace, heal…”_ Hearing them again now, from people who would choose this place and think it appropriate for such a thing, makes her stomach hurt all over again. It makes her want to scream, and it’s only Amarice that stops her. She feels the shift in in her every time the urge rises, and squeezes her hand until Gabrielle summons the strength to drive it back down.

“The evil one met his end in his own temple,” not-Meridian tells them. Gabrielle shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything; she can’t bear to point out that it didn’t happen that way at all. “The temple is gone now, as is he, but its remains have become a sacred place, a reminder that evil can be defeated, even in its own home.” She looks deep into Gabrielle’s eyes; the real Meridian never did that. “Here, our faith breeds _hope_.”

It’s a bad choice of words, and Gabrielle finds herself choking on tears. _So did I,_ she thinks, burying her face in Amarice’s shoulder to stifle another scream. _I bred Hope here too._

Amarice holds her close, soothes her, then lifts her face to glare at the strangers. “We don’t care,” she snaps, tight with her usual impatience. “We’re not here for you or your stupid faith or your stupid… or anything. We’re here for _her_.”

“Of course.” She’s so calm, so sweet. It’s sickening. “But you told me your friend suffered here. I hoped it might ease her burden to know that the place that hurt her has become a place of peace.”

It should, Gabrielle knows. Not so long ago, it would have. Looking around, seeing these people claiming the same reverence for life she once held so dear, reclaiming the site of such horrors as a haven for goodness… not so long ago, it would have helped immeasurably. It would have reminded her that even the darkest corners can be illuminated with a little light and love, that with time and healing even a place like this can bring peace. Not so long ago, it would have given her some of the solace she so desperately needed. It would have made her feel whole again.

So why, now, does it only make her feel worse?

*

Amarice speaks with them alone.

She kisses Gabrielle on the cheek, squeezes her hand one last time, then meanders off to some private corner a little way away. Gabrielle stays where she is, obedient and docile as a child; even if she had the strength to follow, she’s not sure she wants to spend another moment in the company of those people and their so-called faith.

Alone, she hugs her knees to her chest and stares up at the remains of the temple.

Close as it is now, it really is a beautiful sight. If she hadn’t been here back when it was a temple, before the explosions that pulled it apart from its foundations, she might have a hard time believing that it used to be one, that once upon a time these towering stones were a building, a place of worship, a place where unspeakable things happened to innocent people. It seems too pretty now for any of that; for these strangers, looking at it with only false stories to tell them what it was, it really does look like a place of peace and faith, a place for new people to breed a fresh kind of hope.

Gabrielle doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to look too deep inside and spiral into doubt and self-loathing and suspicion. She doesn’t want to wonder how these life-revering pacifists would feel if she told them about the Hope that she bred here.

She’s not sure how long she sits there like that, staring up at the place, awestruck and broken by turns, but it feels like an eternity. There’s so much inside of her, so much she can’t process, so much that makes no sense; the stones don’t resemble a temple at all, and it’s so hard to know what to feel when she’s looking up at a thing that bears no resemblance to her memories.

Minutes, decades later, she feels the touch of a hand on her shoulder again. Her skin feels delicate, parchment-thin, and though the contact is very gentle it burns like a brand against her. She flinches in spite of herself, afraid to look up and find someone she doesn’t want to see, to look for Amarice and see Meridian instead.

“Hey.”

The voice is Amarice’s, though, and so Gabrielle forces herself to seek out the face. It’s there, _hers_ , and the relief cracks deep inside her chest, like a broken rib, serrated and sharp against her lungs. She chokes on it, and almost weeps.

“Amarice,” she breathes, and clings to her like both their lives depends on it.

“It’s me.” She sounds broken too, amazed that Gabrielle is allowing her to see this side of her, that she trusts her enough to let her into the places where even Xena doesn’t get to tread. “I told those losers to take a hike. A big one.”

Gabrielle blinks. The setting sun isn’t bright, but it blinds her. “Why?” she asks.

“Aw, come on.” She rolls her eyes, like it goes without saying, like everything is all so obvious. Maybe it would be if Gabrielle was capable of thinking just now, if she was capable of doing anything at all. “You don’t want a freaking audience watching while you deal with this crap, do you? And you were here first.”

“I think they were here first,” Gabrielle counters weakly.

“Nuh uh. You were here _years_ before they were.” Her lips are wet and cool against Gabrielle’s temples. “I told them to go run around for a while. Said it was a private party. No weirdos allowed.”

“And they agreed to it?” Gabrielle asks. “Just like that?”

“Sure.” She’s beaming now, so proud of herself. “You’re not the only one who can talk your way out of anything, you know. I got many skills too.”

“I see. And when you ‘talked’ to them, was it with your words or your sword?”

Amarice pouts. Gabrielle studies her lips, watches the way her cheeks dimple a little. It strikes her, how easily she lets her guard down, playing the fool to make things simpler. It is so, so different to her memories of this place, Khrafstar and the real Meridian and even Xena, haunted and anguished as she was afterwards. Amarice is nothing like anything Gabrielle has ever known; she’s a thing all her own. Gabrielle wants to memorise every line on her face, wants to drown herself in every part of her, to use her as an anchor to what is now, to the present that is a world away from that awful past.

“Does it matter?” Amarice is grumbling, and _gods_ , how can anyone be so open, so unguarded in a place like this? “Isn’t the important part that I got rid of them? Like, I did that for you.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes for a moment, lets that sink in. She feels vulnerable and visible, like she’s been stripped not just of her clothes but of her skin as well, like her insides are exposed to the elements, beaten by the wind and the rain until there’s nothing left of her at all.

“Did you tell them what happened the last time I was here?” she asks. Her voice quakes, and so does her body. “Do they know what… what I did?”

“What _you_ did?” Amarice’s expression twists, the pout fading to a frown, to something strangely close to sorrow. “Hey, don’t say it like that. You’re not the one who—”

“Amarice, _please_.”

It comes out desperate, worse than frightened. She can’t stand to hear what she knows she’s thinking. _Not here, please not here._

Amarice swallows the words. “Okay. Okay.” She takes a couple of steps backwards, responding to the look on Gabrielle’s face, the panic and the fear. “Take it easy.”

Gabrielle breathes deeply. “Did you tell them?” she asks again, softer but no less urgent.

“No.” The word carries weight, more than Gabrielle would have expected from Amarice. “I didn’t say anything. I’d never, ever do that.”

“Good.”

It feels so important, a weight crushing her chest. These people, these strangers with their strange names and their strange gods, have no right to her story, to her experience. They have no claim to any part of her, and she will rend her bones from her body before she will allow anyone else to take any part of her here again. It doesn’t matter if they’re telling the truth or not, if they really are here to revere life and celebrate the death of an evil god; it doesn’t matter if their definition of _hope_ isn’t the same as hers. She will not let them claim her pain.

Amarice sits down next to her. She keeps her hands to herself, but nudges her shoulder a little, trying just a little too hard to be just a little too casual. It’s reflex, Gabrielle can tell; she doesn’t want to push too far or do too much, but it’s not in her nature to stand back when she could be in the thick of things. For her own sake, she needs to at least try to keep the moment light, to lift Gabrielle back up from the quicksand and the quagmire she’s falling back into.

“You would’ve been proud,” she says. Her voice gives her away, though, high and quivering, too much of all the things she’s trying to hide. “I used all that spiritual stuff you love so much. Or, uh, loved, I guess. Past tense and all. Not so much any more, since you and Xena got…”

“Amarice.” She doesn’t feel as desperate this time; it comes out almost kind.

“Right. Yeah. Anyway.” She clears her throat, pressing on. “No details, I promise. Not a one. I just told them it was a spiritual journey or whatever. That this place hurt you a lot and you wanted to get all in touch with your feelings.”

Gabrielle chuckles. Before Caesar, that might well have been the truth. Now, she doesn’t know what it is.

“Thank you,” she says. “I don’t want the world to know what I did here.”

There it is again, _‘what I did’_ , but this time Amarice doesn’t correct her. She wrings her hands in her lap, visibly fighting to keep from saying the words, then shakes it off and shakes her head.

“They won’t,” she promises, fervent. “Just you and me. And Xena.”

Her voice rises just a little on Xena’s name, and Gabrielle catches a flicker of something that she’d swear was jealousy. It’s just a moment, though, and then it’s gone, shrugged off and shoved aside, as though Amarice realises such a feeling is ridiculous, as though she suddenly remembers that they both love Xena in the same way, and that she’s not here anyway, that whatever she and Gabrielle share that she won’t ever be able to touch, they have _this_ , and it is just theirs.

She’ll learn, Gabrielle knows. She’ll carve out a place for herself in their little group, and out in the wider world as well, and she’ll learn that there are more important things than worrying about how much she’s worth, whether she’s more or less valuable than someone else. Xena and Gabrielle share something that no-one in the world will ever reach; that’s very true, of course, but then again, doesn’t Amarice share things with each of them that the other can’t reach either?

She and Xena share their own passions, battle-lust and a warrior’s fire, things that Gabrielle doesn’t want to understand. Amarice and Xena have things that are all their own, just as this ‘spiritual journey’ is just for her and Gabrielle. They all have something, all three of them; a moment between two of them doesn’t make the others less, and it never will.

There’s room enough for all of them, each in their own way. Gabrielle knows that, and she doesn’t doubt that Amarice will figure it out in time as well. Xena did, long before either of them came into her life; it comes so naturally to her, sharing the things that ignite her, the passion and the power that makes up who she is, and it’s been a very, very long time since Gabrielle felt anything like jealousy. Xena shares moments like this often, countless different kinds of intimacy with countless different kinds of people, each with something uniquely theirs; Gabrielle came to accept that long before she and Xena discovered their own kind of eternity, and she hasn’t looked back.

It doesn’t change what they have, what they _are_. It doesn’t make them any less if Xena finds a moment’s solace from a different source once in a while, or if Gabrielle strays a little too close to another kindred spirit. She learned this many years ago; in time, she knows that Amarice will too.

“Xena’s not here,” Gabrielle says, a reminder to them both that this moment is for them.

Amarice doesn’t say anything. Maybe she doesn’t want to think about it; maybe she thinks that Gabrielle doesn’t want to talk about it. Either way, she shrugs again, shuffling off Xena’s name like a heavy coat on a sweltering day. She takes a moment or two to compose herself, swallowing hard and breathing harder, then turns her face to the remains of the temple, the towering stones and the setting sun.

“You ready?”

 _No_ , Gabrielle thinks.

“Yes,” she says.

*

Inside, it looks nothing like a temple.

There’s no walls or ceiling, no door, nothing at all to separate the inner chamber from the wide space outside, the outer threshold where she stood so long ago and asked if she was allowed to go in, if it was her place to stand among the faithful in their house of worship. If she’d known back then what she knows now she never would have set a foot inside that place. Now, years later, there’s no ‘inside’ to speak of.

The stones circle the spot where the altar stood, a twisted homage to the things that happened on and over it. The altar itself is long gone, blown to pieces and lost to the chasm and the fire and the horrors that surged up from beneath. There’s no trace of it left now, but Gabrielle can see as clear as daylight the place where it was, the earth scorched and livid, like it’s still burning.

There’s no trace of the temple she remembers, the place that still haunts her dreams. She remembers Meridian’s blood soaking through her clothes, her hands, the ground; she remembers it soaking through everything, but there’s no sign of it now, no sign that anyone ever bled here. She looks around, desperate for something, _anything_ that looks familiar, but there’s nothing here at all.

It might as well be a completely different island in a completely a different corner of the world. Circling the place, she wants to point out all the spots where things used to be, all the spots where something or someone hurt her — _I stood there, she stood there, he stood there_ — but those spots are gone now, vanished as though they never even existed at all, as though it was all just a figment of her twisted imagination.

“By the gods,” she hears herself whisper, and falls to her knees.

Amarice doesn’t hear her. She’s pacing, restless and curious, squinting up at the stones towering above them and frowning down at the ground below, taking it all in like a child exploring a new home.

“So this is it, huh?” she asks softly.

Gabrielle digs her fingers into the dirt. That’s not right either, she thinks; it used to be stone. She remembers that very clearly. It left bruises on her knees.

“I don’t know,” she says. Her whole body is shaking. “I don’t… it’s…”

Amarice blinks, turns with a strange look on her face, then dashes to her side. It all happens in less than a heartbeat, and then she’s right there, kneeling in the dirt that shouldn’t be dirt, cradling Gabrielle’s face in her hands, leaning in to fill her vision, desperately trying to ground her. She urges her to look up, to replace all the wrong things with her face, to drown the stone that should be walls and the dirt that should be stone, and find instead the one thing that matters, the present and the moment and _now_. She doesn’t kiss her, just holds her.

“Easy,” she says. Her voice hitches, the sharp high whimper of someone who is supposed to be in charge of a situation a thousand leagues beyond their comfort zone. “I’m here. I’m here, okay? I’m here…”

Gabrielle doesn’t realise she’s trembling until Amarice’s hands still it, until her thumb brushes the curve of her cheek, until she catches the rhythm of her breathing and it hurts just a little less.

She doesn’t know how to give a voice to all the things she’s feeling, to the chaos and confusion, to the surging self-doubt that won’t let her go. This place is not the place she remembers, and now that she’s seen it, now that she’s here, all she can think is _what if it wasn’t real?_

It’s all so different, so changed, so _wrong_ , and of all the things she remembers so clearly, she can’t seem to recall how the flame and the altar and the blood became _this_ , stone and dirt and scorched earth. Maybe she did once, but now that she’s here she doesn’t remember at all.

All of a sudden, for the first time,she wishes that Xena was here. Xena would know. Xena would remember. Xena would tell her, jolt her memory until it started working again. She was here the last time; she could look around this unfamiliar place and repaint the visions that Gabrielle’s mind has washed out. She would smile, hold her and rock her and say, _‘yes, don’t you remember?’_. She would point to the scorched earth where the altar was and fill in the empty dark places in Gabrielle’s memory, the parts of her that were hung suspended, that are still hanging suspended in this place she doesn’t recognise, that blocked out the moments that came later, the distance between then and now, between hanging over an altar and coming back to find nothing but scorched earth.

Gabrielle doesn’t remember the details that Xena would. She remembers pain, horror, fear. She remembers blood all over her hands. She remembers flames licking her body, heat and the kind of sharp, stabbing pains that wouldn’t make sense until much, much later. She remembers feeling like she was being broken, grateful in a strange way for the fire, because it meant that Xena wouldn’t see her face. She remembers stone under her knees after she fell, salt staining her face. She remembers screaming until her throat tore open, before and then again after, remembers being numb and so, so cold, remembers lying in Xena’s arms and not crying. She remembers her own voice, as fragile as glass, whispering _“it hurts inside.”_

This place is not the place where those things happened. There is no stone under her knees, no blood anywhere, and there is nothing here that could catch fire. There is dirt underneath her, stones towering above, and her face is very dry. This place is cool air and rainclouds, and where Xena once held her now she has only a thin young Amazon who doesn’t know anything.

“It feels so wrong,” she whispers, and her body quakes. “I don’t know if it is, or if I am.”

Amarice doesn’t understand. Gabrielle can see that, but she doesn’t know how to make it clearer. “You’re not wrong,” she says urgently. “You’re not, Gabrielle. I promise.”

“But this isn’t _right_ ,” Gabrielle cries. She can hear her voice rising, frightened and cracking like glass. “This place… it’s not the place I remember. It’s wrong. _I’m_ wrong… I…”

“Hey!” Amarice is almost shouting now, almost more desperate in her own way than Gabrielle. “Hey, now, you listen to me. You’re not the one who’s wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong, not a thing. Nothing… _nothing_ that happened here was on you. _Nothing_. You hear me? You did _nothing_ wrong.”

“But I don’t _remember_.” She’s terrified, sickened by what that might mean, and she can’t seem to stop shaking. “Amarice, I don’t remember how any of _this_ happened.”

She gestures, wild and without control. She thinks she might have caught Amarice in the face, but if she does she finds no reaction. Her hands won’t stay still, twitching violently as they take in what’s left of the temple, the stone surrounding them, the dirt on the floor, the scorched earth that used to be an altar. None of it is what she thought it was, and she’s choking on angry, wounded tears as she takes it in. _This isn’t mine_ , she thinks. _This isn’t my pain._ She feels like something’s been ripped out of her.

“You don’t have to remember everything,” Amarice tells her. “It’s okay if you don’t. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, gasping. “You don’t know that!” she shouts. “You weren’t here! How would you know if all my memories were wrong?”

“I know _you_ ,” Amarice says. She doesn’t even hesitate. “I’ve seen those stupid scrolls you write. I’ve heard you telling stories in taverns when you’ve had a few cups too many. I’ve seen you and I’ve talked to you and I’ve fought you and I’ve kissed you. I don’t gotta know you as well as Xena does to know that you’re not someone who remembers stuff wrong. You’re not someone who _does_ stuff wrong. You’re not…” She breaks off, tears in her eyes. Gabrielle wants to thumb them away, but she doesn’t trust her hand to stop trembling. “Gabrielle, you’re not wrong.”

“I have to be.” She’s choking again, and this time it’s a plea. “I have to be. I can’t… it can’t… I _have to be wrong_.”

“You’re not,” Amarice whispers. “The things that happened to you… _they_ were wrong.” Her eyes are bright, her voice thick with grief. “ _Them_. Not you.”

That’s all it takes. A flash of truth in someone else’s voice, and all that pent-up pain slams into her like a speeding chariot. There’s so much of it, _so much_ , and Gabrielle is so weak here, so small and so helpless and so much like the young girl who lost every kind of innocence. She is so _small_ and the pain is so much bigger, so much stronger, and it’s just like last time, just like the moment she fell, the moment Xena caught her, the moment the world exploded and everything dissolved. It hurts inside, it hurts outside, it hurts all over. It hurts, and it hurts, and it _hurts_.

She presses her face to Amarice’s shoulder, and cries.

*

Later, huddled in her arms, she thinks of Xena and cries again.

Amarice cradles her, struggling with the role of nurturer. She holds her and rocks her just like Xena did in the days that came after, but she doesn’t speak at all. Gabrielle remembers the way Xena held her, the way she woke her from those endless dreams; she remembers throwing herself into her arms, the only place she knew that was safe and warm and all her own, clinging to her as though Xena’s arms could keep her together, as though her love could fix the broken things inside her. She remembers sweating, shivering, vomiting; she remembers Xena rocking her, telling her that it was a natural reaction, that it was all right. The words were a comfort, a light in the endless dark, and Gabrielle wrapped them around her like a blanket.

 _“Your body and your dreams are just reacting to your first kill,”_ Xena told her, and Gabrielle believed it even after it stopped being true.

Amarice doesn’t tell her that. She doesn’t try to tell her anything. She just holds her and rocks her and then, when Gabrielle finally stops crying, she kisses her.

Her lips taste like tears. She had them pressed to Gabrielle’s skin while she cried, tender touches to her temples, to her forehead, to her cheek, to wherever she could reach, wherever there was water to wash away. She’s been tracing Gabrielle’s face with her mouth, soothing her with a different kind of kiss, and when Gabrielle lets her own mouth fall open for the familiar kind, she recognises herself in the tang of salt and sweat.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks. _I’m so, so sorry._ But when she tries to say it, all that comes out, shuddering and desperate, is “Please…”

Amarice catches the words on her tongue, the one she said and the ones she didn’t. “Anything,” she breathes. “ _Anything_.”

Gabrielle shouldn’t want _anything_. She knows that. She should want nothing, should want to be punished, should want the kind of false comfort she found in Xena’s words the last time she was here. _“Your first kill,”_ she called it, and when Gabrielle’s stomach was swelling and she was crying and scared and saying that she deserved it, she told her _“you are not the first person ever to shed blood”_.

Xena never looked at her the way Amarice is looking at her now, and she never once said _“you did nothing wrong.”_

Back then, Gabrielle couldn’t even imagine herself killing anyone; she wanted so much to be like Xena, but she never really thought that it might mean getting blood on her hands, taking lives and being violent. She has changed and grown, and things are very, very different now.

Now, years later, she’s killed again, and more than just once. She has learned the difference between taking a life by necessity and being forced into action against her will. She has made the choice herself countless times now, has picked up a weapon to defend the weak and the helpless, has picked up a weapon to defend _Xena_ when she was weak and helpless. She has learned from every drop of blood she’s spilled, and she knows now what she refused to believe back then, what Amarice told her over and over, what Xena never said at all.

_You did nothing wrong. It wasn’t your fault. You’re not the one who—_

“Please,” she chokes again, desperate to cut off the thoughts before they strangle her.

“Anything,” Amarice promises, and Gabrielle takes her wrist and says “ _Everything_.”

Amarice’s hands are nothing like Xena’s. Xena is a conqueror, a warrior, and she has the hands of one. Palms flat, fingers spread, she lays claim to every part of Gabrielle she touches. Amarice might be an Amazon, a warrior in nature if not in talent, but she touches her like a priestess. She’s so shy, so uneasy, like this is all so new to her.

Gabrielle guides her, shows her how to move; she’s always been the inexperienced one, but now she’s in complete control, bringing Amarice’s palm down to her stomach, pressing her fingers to the place where Hope grew inside of her. It’s flat now, taut with muscle she worked hard to build, but it wasn’t last time.

She tenses a little at the contact; the muscles jump and twitch under Amarice’s fingertips, and they both gasp.

“By the gods,” Amarice says. “By the _gods_ , Gabrielle. You’re so…”

“Don’t.” Her thumb makes small circles on Amarice’s wrist, slow then fast then slow again. “Please. Don’t tell me I’m strong.”

What she means, of course, is _don’t be like Xena_.

Amarice doesn’t know that; she wasn’t there at the tree, and she didn’t see the passion on Xena’s face, the heat hooding her eyes. Still, though, she senses a deeper meaning, the weight of something Gabrielle cannot hear right now. She nods, and keeps her hand still against the skin.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, that’s… that’s okay. You want me to tell you you’re safe? Want me to tell you it’s over?”

“No.” She doesn’t know why. “No, I don’t want that.”

“Okay.” The word hitches this time, the slightest hint of a tremor, but Amarice doesn’t let it stop her. “That’s okay too. Anything you want or need or whatever. _Anything_. I just… I just want to…”

She leans in, visibly desperate to kiss her again. Gabrielle closes her eyes and lets her.

There is so much reverence in the way Amarice kisses her, and that bleeds out into the way she touches her as well; she keeps one hand on her stomach, even after Gabrielle lets go of her wrist, but the other one wanders now of its own accord, following the curves and contours of her body like a scholar studying a scroll. She uses the backs of her fingers, the parts of her that aren’t hardened and calloused by holding weapons, and Gabrielle wonders if she’s doing that on purpose, if she’s trying to distance them both from the violence that shaped them.

Her touch is so unsure, fingers trembling, like she’s afraid Gabrielle will shatter if she does the wrong thing. In another place, another time, Gabrielle might have laughed at the idea; she might have taken her face in her hands, forced her to look at her, and said again, like she did in the cave, _“I’m not made of sugar.”_ She might have been able to convince her there, but here the danger is very real. Amarice is right to be afraid; Gabrielle certainly is.

She doesn’t know what she wants. She doesn’t know what good this is supposed to do, how it’s supposed to chase away the shadows of this place, the wrong memories of wrong things. She just knows that when Amarice touches her, when she kisses her, when she breathes and moves against her, she remembers where and when and who she is, not then but _now_. She knows that she will survive, because when Amarice touches her she remembers that she already has. She doesn’t want to hear _‘you’re strong’_ , but when Amarice is the only one who trembles she knows that she is.

She lets her head fall back when Amarice’s mouth leaves hers, dirt catching in her hair when her lips shift down to brush her jaw and her throat. Her eyes open of their own accord, and she takes in the sky, the stars bordering the clouds, the way the moon lights up the stone towering above.

It really does look like a temple in the moonlight, but a far cry the kind it used to be. It looks like the kind of temple that really is a sacred place, a house of peace and love and hope, the kind she believed it was the last time, before the truth uncovered itself and tore her to shreds. She knows the difference now, and when she looks up and finds the stars in the sky, then looks down and sees them reflected in Amarice’s eyes, she can almost believe that the past doesn’t matter.

 _I want to remember,_ she thinks, and _I want to forget_. She wants Amarice to help her with both of those things, to do everything that Xena couldn’t, but she doesn’t know how to say that, how to put those contradictions into words that make sense. She can only tangle her fingers in Amarice’s hair, hold her mouth against her skin, and catch her wrist again with her other hand.

“Please,” she says again, and draws her away from her stomach.

Amarice doesn’t need to ask to know what she means, what she’s asking for. Her skin goes white under Gabrielle’s touch, and her face is pale as well, beautiful in the moonlight.

“Gabrielle?” she asks, but what she means is, _are you sure?_

Gabrielle kisses her fingers, one by one, then finds her lips again.

 _“It’s an Amazon thing,”_ Amarice said, the first time they kissed. She was breathless, blushing, and Gabrielle could see the want in her, the ache to be more than she knew she was. She feels the same thing in her again now, hope and heat and a hunger that threatens to overpower her, to overwhelm even this place and the things that happened here. It’s the kind of hunger she sees in Xena sometimes, not after a battle when her blood is hot with want and passion, but in the quiet of a campfire at night when it’s just the two of them, when she catches the light in Gabrielle’s eyes, when she reaches across and takes her hand and _loves_ her.

This isn’t that kind of love. Nothing is. Those moments, the kind of love she shares with Xena is the kind that bonds two souls and holds them together, the kind that whispers _‘for eternity’_ and believes that such a thing could truly exist.

This isn’t that, and it doesn’t pretend to be; this is the kind of love that Ephiny taught her in those fleeting moments when Xena was not there, when Gabrielle was alone and her heart was broken. This is the kind of love that comes from pain, that comes when there is nothing else, when the words burn, when hope is a pain in her stomach, when her soul is shattered and she is lost and broken and doesn’t think she’ll ever find her way back. It is the only thing that has ever healed her when Xena couldn’t.

 _Love me like Ephiny did,_ she thinks, and when she leans back to find the salt and the stars in Amarice’s eyes, she knows that she hears her.

Amarice lays her out on the ground, reverent and careful, then holds her own body over her until the world shrinks down to just them. Gabrielle knows that the stones are still up there, knows that she’s less than an arm’s length away from the scorched earth that used to be an altar, knows that the air around her once turned pestilent with innocent blood, ringing out with the screams of an evil god. She can’t forget that, but with Amarice all around her like this she can block out the pain and the memories and focus on the other sensations, the sparks igniting under her skin, under Amarice’s fingertips, under her care.

Gabrielle recognises Ephiny in the way Amarice touches her. Ephiny was so patient, so aware of Gabrielle’s body even when Gabrielle herself didn’t understand why it wasn’t responding the way she wanted it to. When she’s flushed and ready, Gabrielle is easily pleased, satisfied with just a little pressure and a few well-chosen words, but it all comes so much harder in moments like this. Xena has never really understood that — she’s always at her hottest when she’s feeling worst — but Ephiny did, and she was always so good at coaxing Gabrielle’s body into readiness, warming it in spite of itself.

Amarice is clumsy. She may not really know what she’s doing, but Gabrielle has felt these exact touches before, and she doesn’t need to ask if Ephiny taught her as well.

She’s not really wet when Amarice finds her way under her skirts. She feels the sudden catch in Amarice’s breath, the flicker of panic, but she doesn’t let her pull away. Amarice’s mouth falls open, twisting into compassion and a weight of worry that might be touching in another time and place. She doesn’t want to hurt her, and she is so lacking in this kind of experience.

Gabrielle knows that feeling all too well. She remembers Xena again, remembers being pressed up against that tree, remembers the passion in her eyes when she said _“gods, Gabrielle, all of you.”_ It was far from the first time they’d done it that way, but they’d never done it _here_. She remembers feeling so bruised and raw inside, like she was the one being taken even though she wasn’t, even though it wasn’t about her at all, even though it was Xena’s pleasure and Xena’s moment. She remembers thinking that she could never understand why someone would want to be taken like that.

She understands it now. The last time she was here, this place forced itself inside her. She never had a chance to refuse or reject or resist; she never had a chance to say ‘no’. Khrafstar, Meridian, Dahak… they did what they wanted to her, with her, _in her_ , and she never had a choice in any of it.

She has a choice this time. She can end this any time she wants, and she knows that Amarice will understand; she’ll stop in a heartbeat, just as Xena did, but that’s not what Gabrielle wants this time. This time, though she knows it will be painful, she chooses it for herself.

She finds Amarice’s gaze, holds it until the stars are all she can see. Amarice’s lips are wet, shining in the moonlight, and they tremble when she warns, “It’s gonna hurt.”

Gabrielle licks her own lips. “I know,” she says. “It already does.”

She pulls her down, captures her mouth to swallow the cry when the moment comes, but she can’t mask the way her body stiffens, the way she clenches, the way it shudders through her like a wave. Amarice is slow and so, so careful; she cups her face with her free hand, thumbing the sensitive spot behind her ear, doing everything she can think of to distract and soothe her. Gabrielle presses up against her, holds their bodies close together, uses the physicality of it to ground her, to remind her that they’re both solid, both real, both _human_.

She’s here, she reminds herself, and spreads herself a little wider. She’s here, and she’s in control. This is happening because she wants it, because she asked for it. This pain is hers, and no-one will ever take it from her.

The thought helps, probably more than Amarice’s hands and her soothing kisses. Gabrielle breathes in time with the movement, catches the familiar rhythm between her teeth. It might be new, doing this with Amarice and doing it here, but she and Xena have done this many times, and that helps as well. She knows her body, and she focuses every part of her on its responses.

It takes a little while. Her body doesn’t want to stop seizing, tormented more by the remembered hurt than what she’s feeling now; the physical pain recedes some, but it takes time for her body to take it all in, for Amarice to find the places inside of her that react, for Gabrielle to close down her thoughts and focus on feeling instead. She’s struggling a little, flailing, but then Amarice’s free hand finds one of hers, and she holds so tight and squeezes so gently and _oh_ , all of Gabrielle relaxes. Her insides clench one more time, and when Amarice pulls out briefly to steady herself it doesn’t hurt so much at all.

They stay like that for a moment or two, Amarice catching her breath Gabrielle catching her thoughts, and then she’s inside her again, sliding in slowly with two fingers. This time it’s almost easy, close to comfortable; Gabrielle feels herself opening up more readily now, feels herself getting slick, and she grips Amarice’s hand so fiercely that they both wince.

“Oh,” Amarice manages, staring down at her hand, at the way it moves. The look on her face is radiant, awe and pride, like she can’t believe what’s happening, like she can’t believe she’s responsible. “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah.” Gabrielle groans, presses her forehead to the crook of her neck, finds the skin with her tongue. “Good. That’s good.”

“You…” Amarice is groaning too, but it’s very different, almost tearful. “You sure?”

“Yes.” The word comes out like a whimper, but it’s the good kind now, the kind that she is very familiar with. “Yes, _oh_ , yes.”

She builds slowly, aching inside, and it devastates her to look down at herself and realise that it really does feel good, that _she_ feels good, that she is here and this is happening and it feels good.

“You _are_ strong,” Amarice whispers, cheek wet and cold against her forehead. “I’ve never met anyone as strong as you.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes, holds her breath, and thinks, _I know_.

She cries when she comes. The tears come fast, a rush almost hotter than the climax itself; she sobs with abandon, open and raw like she was in Ephiny’s hut that time, when she was broken and couldn’t be fixed, when Xena was gone and Hope was dead and she wished that the pleasure would kill her too. She cried then, and she cries again now, but this time she doesn’t want to die with it.

This time she knows what being dead feels like. She remembers that too, recalls the bigger death in the throes of the little one, and looks down on herself as though from some vast height, as though she’s suspended all over again. She remembers going through Hell and then she remembers going through _this_ , the temple and its own kind of inner death. She remembers how it felt to survive both of them, and she remembers what _survive_ means. She remembers, and she cries.

It hurts a bit when Amarice pulls out. Gabrielle shudders and scrabbles for purchase in the dirt, but then that’s over too and it’s just them, just the two of them and the stone and the stars.

“Hey.” Amarice’s voice is hoarse. “You okay?”

Gabrielle gazes up at the sky for a long moment, then turns her head to catch the silhouettes of the stones still looming above; they’re incredibly tall, pitched at a seemingly impossible angle, but they shelter this place like a shroud, like the kind of sanctuary it never was before. Strange, she thinks, the way things change; as a temple this place brought only destruction, but now that it’s been destroyed the mess left behind feels more reverent, more _holy_ than the temple could ever be.

She thinks of the strange people who come here now, not to worship their gods but to celebrate the fall of an evil one. They told her this is a sacred place now, the scorched earth like hallowed ground, and for the first time Gabrielle can see why. It was beautiful beneath the setting sun and it’s even more beautiful now under the stars, the stones illuminated and ethereal and eternal. Dahak and his followers seem very far away, and for a moment Gabrielle feels that way too.

“I don’t know,” she says to Amarice. She finds her other hand, the one that’s sticky, and presses it to her heart. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. But I’m here, and I’m alive.”

“Yeah.” Amarice bows her head to kiss her chest, to find her heartbeat with her lips. Her tongue catches the edges of her fingers, wet in the moonlight, and she shivers. “Yeah, you are.”

Gabrielle digs her own fingers into the dirt, reaches for the spot where the earth is scorched, where the altar once stood.

 _I am,_ she thinks, and lets the truth and the earth tether her. _I am_.

*


	12. Chapter 12

*

They make camp under one of the tall stones.

Amarice takes charge, stepping hesitantly into the role that Xena would normally play. Giving orders doesn’t come any more naturally to her than taking them, but she does her best with what she has, and in any event Gabrielle is in no condition to argue or disobey.

She feels hollow, strung out and shell-shocked, and she can’t really do much of anything. She’s aching and shivering, sore in so much more than her body, and when she looks around she finds that she can’t make any sense of the world she sees. She feels like she’s been picked up by some great winged beast, flown off to somewhere far, far away, like none of this is really happening at all. Gabrielle has always been aware of her surroundings, awake to whatever’s happening around her, but now she feels so lost, so confused, that everything she’s been through these past few hours might as well have happened to someone else entirely.

She lets Amarice sit her down at the base of the stone, watches her flit about gathering firewood and whatever else she thinks they need. It should be soothing, watching her, but it’s not; it’s not much of anything at all, and when Amarice settles down at her side and wraps a blanket over her shoulder, all she can manage is a hazy, confused frown.

“Why are we still here?” she asks, very quietly.

Amarice actually recoils a little at that, head jerking back like she’s taken a surprise punch to the jaw. “It’s late,” she points out with a puzzled frown. The words come out evenly enough, but her face says _‘why do I have to explain this?’_. “We’re not gonna get anywhere by stumbling around in the dark.”

“Oh.”

That makes sense, she thinks in the part of her that can still think at all. She has been aware of the moonlight ever since it cut through the clouds yet still somehow the idea of it being too dark to travel feels like a revelation. _It’s late. We don’t travel when it’s late. Why else would we be here?_ It makes so much sense, but she’s still so confused. Everything feels so odd, so unnatural, the world shrunk until it doesn’t fit any more; she feels like she’s learning these things for the first time, like she’s never travelled a day in her life.

“Yeah.” Amarice scoots away a little bit, leaving about a hand’s space between them. She looks thoughtful, and more than a little upset. “Are you… okay?”

Gabrielle blinks a few times, then shakes her head. “I feel like I’ve been outside myself,” she says. It’s not exactly true, but it’s as close to the strangeness as she can articulate. “Like I’m coming back from somewhere very far away. I don’t know.”

Amarice nods, but doesn’t touch her. “That’s okay,” she says. “We can stay here as long as you want.”

 _I don’t want to stay here at all,_ Gabrielle thinks; the words don’t sit right inside her head, though, so out loud she just says, “Thank you.”

Amarice is still frowning “How you feeling?” she asks.

It’s a very different question, Gabrielle knows, to _‘are you okay?’_ , and for a moment she’s not sure how to answer, where to look for the right thing to say. She wants to be truthful but she’s afraid of sounding cruel.

She doesn’t say _‘sore’_ , even though it’s true, because she doesn’t want Amarice to feel like she’s responsible. She only did what Gabrielle told her to do, and she doesn’t deserve to feel guilty. Amarice might have spent her life training under the Amazons, but she’s still inexperienced with things like that, and Gabrielle knows that she was thrown by what they found here and by the way Gabrielle reacted. She is still so frightened that she hurt her, and Gabrielle doesn’t want to feed that worry any more than she already has.

Gabrielle is hurting, definitely, but it’s a hurt that’s all her own. It’s a familiar hurt, a healing hurt, a hurt that came under her control, if not by her own hand. She knows now, in a way, how Xena feels after all those bloody battles, when she comes to Gabrielle wanting to be taken with force, when she cries out for _harder_ or _stronger_ or _more_. Gabrielle will never be as ferocious as Xena, will never feel things with the kind of power and passion that Xena does, but she feels them much more deeply in her own way, and for the first time in her life she understands how it feels to take her struggles into her own hands, to claim them for herself. She’s hurting now because she wanted to hurt then, because she took the pain that broke her and replaced it with a pain that felt good.

She doesn’t really feel healed, and she definitely doesn’t feel whole, but she feels at least feels human; that’s more than she felt last time. The ache between her legs is a pain she knows very well, and she welcomes it because it’s safe. Like her shoulder when it worsened, when she insisted that it was fine, when she begged Xena to let her deal with it herself. Like her seasickness, the surging of the sea and the churning in her soul as Britannia grew closer. Like all the small, meaningless hurts that she took inside herself and made her own, all the little ways that she healed what was festering inside her. She _is_ strong, and she can take care of herself.

How to turn that into an answer, though? How to turn _‘it hurts, but it’s mine’_ into something Amarice might comprehend, something she won’t blame herself for?

“Everything’s changed,” she says. She said the same thing to Xena after she killed Meridian, after Xena killed Khrafstar, after the temple collapsed and became whatever it is now, before she had any idea how true the words really were. “I’m not the same person I was. This isn’t the same place it was. Everything’s so different now.” It’s not a good thing, she thinks, but it’s not exactly a bad thing either. It’s just the way it is. “That’s how I feel.”

Amarice nods. Gabrielle can tell that she doesn’t really know what to say. It’s understandable; Gabrielle still feels dissociated and distanced, and she knows that Amarice has a difficult time talking to her when she gets like this. Still, though, she tries because she promised she would.

“I get that,” she says after a few quiet moments. “I mean… stuff’s gotta change, right? If nothing ever did, we’d still be crying for our mothers’ milk or something. But _you_ … heck, you’re not even the same person you were when we met, and that wasn’t so long ago…” Her voice hitches, wracked with the realisation of everything that’s happened since their paths first crossed. “…or, uh, I guess maybe it was, huh?”

“It wasn’t,” Gabrielle says. “It just feels like it was.”

“Yeah.” She sounds so drained all of a sudden. “It’s hard to keep up sometimes, you know? You and Xena… it’s hard work.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle says. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have—”

“No!” It comes out sharp, almost a wail; Amarice catches herself with a blush, then tries again. “I mean, uh… no, definitely not. Jeez, just the thought of you going through this all on your own… wouldn’t want that. Not for you.”

That last part is pointed, skirting unpleasantly close to Xena’s over-protectiveness. Gabrielle shakes her head, very serious. “I can take care of myself,” she says.

It feels different, telling Amarice and telling Xena. With Xena, she always feels like she needs to prove herself, like the words mean more than they do, like there’s always something deeper and darker lurking under the surface. Xena would trust her with her life, Gabrielle knows; she just doesn’t trust her to live her own. She’s always so conscious of what Gabrielle used to be, so preoccupied and distracted by the young girl who followed her home from Poteidaia, the girl she fell in love with. She is so afraid of letting that girl fend for herself, of opening her eyes one morning and realising that she’s grown up, that maybe she doesn’t need some washed-up old warrior princess to protect her any more.

Gabrielle doesn’t need Xena to protect her. She hasn’t needed that for a long, long time. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still need _Xena_.

She doesn’t really need Amarice. Certainly not in the way she needs Xena, maybe not at all. She brought her here because she wanted her, because she wanted _someone_ , and someone who was not Xena. She could have come here alone, could have taken care of herself just like she said, but she didn’t want to; she wanted the company, wanted a tether to the present, and yes, she wanted Amarice specifically. But wanting is not the same as needing, and there’s a big difference between what she feels when she lies with Xena and what she feels here now.

Amarice clears her throat, visibly uncomfortable. It’s hard to know what’s motivating her, whether she can sense some of the sentiment in Gabrielle or whether her own feelings are reaching too high; she does this often, fumbling and floundering for something to say, anything to keep from thinking too much about herself, from looking inside and finding her own feelings. For the first time, Gabrielle realises that she never actually asked how Amarice feels about all of this; so lost inside her own suffering and struggles, she never once asked if _she’s_ all right.

The thing about Amarice is that she always seems so unaffected on the surface. She doesn’t follow orders and she always has an opinion, whether she should or not, but Gabrielle has never seen her take a hit her that she didn’t block and counter two seconds later. She stumbles a lot, trips and falls often, but she always gets back up. She’s not like Xena, who is unstoppable, but she is very much like Gabrielle, sometimes clumsy and occasionally unsure of herself but always willing and eager to try. Amarice might not do what she’s told, but she’ll never back down from a challenge that comes after her, and she always does what she thinks is right for the people she cares about.

It’s easy to forget, when faced with all that youthful exuberance and wide-eyed idealism, that Amarice feels things too, and just as deeply in her own way as Gabrielle or Xena.

Gabrielle remembers dying. She remembers the pain of the nails, the weakness that flooded her as the blood drained out, remembers thinking, _at last, thank the gods, it’s over, we don’t have to worry about it any more_. She remembers Xena telling her about her vision, telling her with tears in her eyes that they were going to die on the cross; she remembers not believing it, refusing to accept it at all, until Alti showed up and shared it with her as well. When it finally happened, it was almost a relief to not have to be afraid of it any more.

For her and Xena, it was over. The pain was only just started, but the _fear_ was over. Gabrielle didn’t have to watch any more as Xena flinched and glanced over her shoulder every other minute; she didn’t have to wake up bathed in sweat as she relived the pain Alti poured into her through that vision. All of that was _over_. They died and they came back, and being alive brought with it a new wash of challenges to face, but the hard part was over. It had ended.

But Gabrielle has seen the way Amarice turns pale when she thinks or talks about it. She’s seen the way she looks at them sometimes over a campfire, horror blanching her face and tears pricking her eyes. For her, it wasn’t just something that happened; it was a terrible, heartbreaking loss, and she still hasn’t recovered from it.

 _“You weren’t the one left behind,”_ she said to Gabrielle, when they started out on the journey to Britannia. They were squabbling over Gabrielle’s injured shoulder, and Gabrielle was telling her not to worry. Amarice looked at her, eyes bright with still-present sorrow, and said, _“Easy for you to say.”_ It feels like a lifetime ago now, the start of a story still unravelling, but Gabrielle can’t forget the look on her face when she said it, the tremors lifting her voice. She’d never seen anyone so haunted.

“Hey.” Her voice cuts through the memory, sharp and clean and unexpectedly steady. “You know you don’t have to, right?”

Gabrielle blinks. It takes her a moment to come back to the present, to look at the woman sitting next to her and wonder if maybe she’s changed a little from this too. “Don’t have to what?”

“Take care of yourself.” She says it like it’s obvious. It might be, but Gabrielle had all but forgotten she said it. “I mean, you _can_. Sure, we all know that. But you don’t have to. We got your back.”

It’s interesting, the way she says _‘we’_. Xena’s shadow is still hanging over both of them, but it weighs much more heavily on Amarice than it does on Gabrielle. Gabrielle knows Xena so intimately by now, and in more ways than just the physical, but to Amarice she is still a symbol; she worships the warrior princess, even now when her name is a barrier between them, and she would never take her name in vain.

In some ways Gabrielle finds it oddly comforting to remember that, but in another it doesn’t sit at all well inside of her. Xena should be here, she knows; she’s earned the right to see Gabrielle work through this, to see how deep the scars run that this place left behind, how completely her obsession with Caesar left its mark. She’s earned the right to know all of this, to see Gabrielle at her weakest, knowing as they both do what caused it. After everything they’ve been through together, after everything they’ve become, Xena has earned the right to be there for Gabrielle now in all the ways she wasn’t last time. Their relationship has earned the right to stand up and defy the place that almost tore it apart. Thinking about that, hearing Amarice say _‘we’_ , like she’s thinking about it too, makes the guilt burn blood-hot.

Gabrielle knows that Xena should be here. She knows that she owes her that much. But at the same time, she knows with a certainty that runs so deep she can’t carve it out that it _can’t_ be Xena.

Xena has her back; Amarice is right about that. She has all of her. Amarice is right, too, when she says that Gabrielle doesn’t have to take care of herself, that they will always take care of her whether or not she needs them to, but where Amarice does it only when she knows for sure that she’s wanted, Xena does it even when she isn’t. Gabrielle doesn’t have the strength to fight her own demons out here if she has to fight Xena as well. She can’t bear to struggle against the one person who loves her more than anything.

Amarice leans in devastatingly close. “We got you,” she says again.

“I know you do,” Gabrielle whispers.

She closes her eyes, and kisses her until all thoughts of Xena disappear.

*

Not-Meridian and her people return a couple of hours later, setting up a small camp some distance away.

It’s very, very late by now, the moon at its zenith in the sky, but they barely seem to notice the hour at all, and if they recognise the two silhouettes huddled in the shadow of the stone they neither approach nor call out to them. Gabrielle wonders why they bothered to come back at all, why they didn’t just wait until the morning like normal, sensible people.

She wonders if they want to watch the sun rise, wonders if it will be as breathtaking as the sunset was. She hates herself for wondering, and her body is quivering when she reminds herself that it shouldn’t matter, that this place is a pit of despair no matter how pretty it is. She wants to strangle them for coming back, and she wants to tear down all the stones with her bare hands for having the cruelty to be so beautiful.

Whatever their reason for coming back, they’re perfectly content to keep their distance, making their camp far enough away to allow for privacy on both sides. It doesn’t help at all; even from afar, the sight of them makes Gabrielle feel queasy, a knot of discomfort tangling in her stomach until she can hardly breathe. She doesn’t know whether it’s shame or fear, but all of a sudden she feels completely wrong inside, and when Amarice touches her arm to try and steady her it’s all Gabrielle can do to keep from lashing out and striking her across the face for no discernible reason.

“You okay?”

Gabrielle swallows hard, pretends that she’s looking into the fire instead of trying to hold herself down. “I’m fine,” she says, without conviction.

Amarice doesn’t believe it. That’s just fine; Gabrielle didn’t really expect her to. She tilts her head at the distant figures, and shoots her a look that says, _‘it’s just us here, remember?’_.

“They really freak you out, huh?” she asks.

The accusation stings. Gabrielle doesn’t know why. It’s true enough, after all.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she says. “I just don’t like the idea of anyone coming here to worship.”

“I don’t think that’s what they do.” She sounds dubious, though, like she’s not really sure she wants to get caught in the middle of this. “I mean, didn’t they say it was more a… ‘celebrate life’ kind of deal? Like you and that Eli guy. Gotta be a good thing, right? Finding something worth celebrating in a place like this?” She tilts her head, gazes up at the stone looming over them. “And it _is_ pretty.”

It is. That doesn’t help at all. “That’s not the point,” Gabrielle says with a heavy, frustrated sigh. “They have no idea what actually happened here. No idea. They just showed up and make it into something completely different.”

“Isn’t that for the best, though?” Amarice asks. She means well, but it’s not what Gabrielle wants to hear. “Don’t you want all the bad stuff to be dead and buried? I mean, isn’t it good that no-one else has to go through what you did?” She’s frowning now, genuinely confused. “Or… do you want them to go through it, just so they can say they get it?”

“Of course not.” She wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and she resents the question. “It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, that’s all. People finding peace here. People saying it’s a place of hope when it’s not. It just feels _wrong_.”

Amarice’s frown deepens, inches closer to worry. “That’s not the Gabrielle I know,” she says, very quietly. “Aren’t you supposed to be all ‘peace and love wherever you can get it’ like Eli was? Shouldn’t it make you feel better that the place that caused you so much pain is helping other people to find something a bit more positive?”

“No,” Gabrielle says.

“But…” She trails off, then sighs as well. “Okay. You don’t have to like ’em. That’s… it’s rough on you. I get that. It’s just…”

Gabrielle suspects she knows where this is heading, but she quirks a brow just the same. “Out with it.”

“Well, uh…” She swallows. “I was just thinking we should probably go over there. Make an effort, show a little gratitude, you know?”

Of course she thinks that. Had they been anywhere else, Gabrielle would have felt exactly the same way. But they’re not somewhere else and she hates everything about this.

“Why?” she snaps, and doesn’t even bother to keep the tension out of her voice. “Because they left us alone for a few hours?”

“Well, yeah.” Amarice is blinking now, caught between the worry and the confusion. “They did a nice thing for us. Don’t you think we at least owe ’em a ‘thank you’ for that?”

 _No,_ Gabrielle thinks, uncharacteristically spiteful. Just the thought of spending time with those people — with any people, honestly, but especially with the kind of people who would turn a place of pain into a place of peace — makes her stomach feel sick and her bones splinter like ice. She doesn’t want anything to do with them, doesn’t even want to see them. But how in the world is she supposed to say that without sounding childish and petulant?

She doesn’t get the chance to say it at all. Either Amarice recognises the reticence in her for what it is or else she thinks she sees something deeper under the surface, because she cuts her off before she can humiliate herself, pressing on as though she never even paused.

“I’m not saying we gotta bow down and swear fealty to their weirdo gods or anything,” she says quickly. “It’s just… I dunno, Gab, they just seem _decent_. You know? Good people. Or at least they play it well.” Gabrielle has to bite down hard to keep from pointing out that Khrafstar and Meridian played it well too. “I asked them to take a hike, and they did. No questions, no argument, no nothin’. Just turned around and took off because I asked them to. And I know… I know it doesn’t change anything. But they didn’t have to do it, you know? They didn’t have to do anything. But they did. They took a hike. For you.”

The implication is heavy. _You, not me. You’re the reason they put themselves out. You’re the one who owes them that ‘thank you’. But if you can’t do it, you should at least let me._

Gabrielle closes her eyes for a long, long while. It feels so strange, the role reversal at play here, and more than a little unsettling. She’s usually the trusting one, the one who would leap at an opportunity like this, a chance to bond with people from a new culture, to learn new things and new perspectives, to spend a little time with people she’s never met. She’s usually the one begging Xena not to let her warrior’s biases and her warlord’s sullenness blind her against a chance for enrichment and enlightenment. She’s usually the one who is so eager and so open.

She doesn’t feel that way now, though. She knows that Amarice is right about this, that there is nothing wrong with finding positive things in painful places. These strangers, she knows, are harmless at worst and inspiring at best, and she knows too that her bard’s spirit should be singing at this potential fount of new stories and new worlds.

It’s not, though. She, who could once find faith in anyone no matter their history, now finds herself faithless and frightened. Even with all the evidence to the contrary, still she can’t trust these people. She’s afraid, and she doubts.

She feels like a part of her is broken, like that bard’s spirit she once cherished so much is fractured, split into so many pieces and so deep inside of her that she’ll never be able to fish them all out, much less repair them. She doesn’t want to share stories or experiences with these people. She doesn’t trust them at all. For the first time in her life, faced with something new and exciting, all she wants to do is run away and hide.

This place was once a temple. Now it’s a monument to something it never even knew. Amarice is right when she says that Gabrielle should take some comfort in that. She should find some peace in knowing that others have turned something awful into something beautiful, into a vessel for a different, purer kind of hope. She should revel in it, but she doesn’t. She just wants these people to leave this place, to leave _her_ alone. And Amarice is right about that too: this is not the Gabrielle either one of them knows.

She hunches forward, holds her hand over the campfire until the flames lick at the skin, until she remembers a different kind of fire and a different kind of pain. She feels very small, and very angry.

“I’m not going over there.” She doesn’t recognise her own voice; even in her darkest moments, she never sounds so vicious, so close to hateful. “But you’re welcome to, if you want.”

Amarice’s eyes go wide in the moonlight. “What, just leave you here?”

“Why not?”

“Well, uh…” She winces a little, like she realises there’s no clean way out of this, that whatever she tries to say will come out wrong. “It’s just, you know, it’s been kind of rough for you. Dunno if I wanna just leave you here all on your own.”

“I’m fine.” She tightens her jaw, wills one of them to believe it. “I just don’t think I could face other people right now. After what happened here, is that really such a strange thing?”

“I guess not,” Amarice murmurs; she still sounds uneasy, though, like she’s trying to convince herself more than actually agreeing. “You really don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” Gabrielle tries to summon a smile, but the best she can manage is a sour grimace. “And anyway, you’re right. They didn’t have to leave us alone like that, but they did. You should thank them for that.” She forces down a deep breath, digs deep for something that might masquerade as sincerity. “From both of us.”

Amarice seems to think about that for some time. She’s understandably hesitant, but Gabrielle can tell that her eagerness will get the better of her in the end. She sees so much of herself in the way she keeps glancing over at those strange shadowy figures, so much of the idealist she used to be in the barely-repressed curiosity lighting up in Amarice’s eyes. Amarice has never been the kind of person who would seek out stories or spiritual enlightenment, but she loves people and she loves being a part of something. She’s intrigued, and it shows.

Gabrielle leans over, kisses her lightly on the cheek. _Go on,_ she thinks. _Be young. Be friendly and curious and happy. Be the kind of person I wish I still was._

Whether she senses the sentiment behind it or or not, the gesture seems to do the trick. Amarice straightens a little, smiles, then swings up to her feet. “I won’t be long,” she says, masking her enthusiasm with a moment’s shyness. “I mean, I just gotta say ‘thanks’ or whatever, right? Won’t be more than, like, a minute.”

“Of course you won’t.” Gabrielle knows better than to believe that, of course. She’s been in Amarice’s boots more than enough times to know how this will turn out. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Amarice rolls her eyes. The lightness seems to be infectious; she’s almost beaming now. “So nothing fun?”

It’s hard not to return her smile, harder still not to forget where they are and why it hurts when she looking at her like that.

“That’s right,” Gabrielle says. “Nothing fun. Now off you go.”

For once, Amarice seems happy to do as she’s told.

*

Left alone, Gabrielle curls up next to the campfire.

Her mind is racing, alert and hyper-aware of everything around her, but her body is beyond exhausted. She’s sore, and not just in the obvious way; her muscles ache in the way they do sometimes after days on the road with only a few hours’ rest, the way they do after she’s been thrown about on a battlefield, watching with swerving, blurry vision as Xena takes on a dozen warlords without breaking a sweat. It’s not exactly a satisfying sort of ache, but she’s come to associate it with progress, with being able to look back and count the steps or the blows she’s taken.

The fire is hot, and she shuffles in as close to it as she can get, pulling the blanket ever more tightly around herself until it becomes a kind of cocoon, until she can use it to block of the hazy flare of the strangers’ camp, the place where Amarice has gone. She’s not exactly cold, but she’s shivering just the same, and it’s easier to pretend that it comes from the weather than to look inside and see the truth. Her stomach feels strange, chilled inside like it does when she swallows too much cold water, but the rest of her is unbearably hot, skin flushed and feverish from the fire and the blanket.

It was hot the last time too, she remembers, her body suspended and shrouded in flame. She remembers the pain of it, remembers thinking that it couldn’t be natural; she’d been burned before, scorched her fingers over a cooking fire or scalded them in hot water, but it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like something sinister, something almost alive, and in the heartbeat after it released her, the heartbeat before Xena caught her, the heartbeat when she hung like a feather in the air, falling and falling and falling, she found herself wondering if it would leave a brand on her.

It did. It definitely did. Just not the kind she was thinking of.

It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep. The fire is hot, the blanket heavy, and her body’s exhaustion is so much more powerful than the racing of her mind. She dreams deeply when she drifts off, the past blending vividly with the present, thoughts turning to visions in the foggy space between imagination and experience.

She dreams of the temple, not as it was then but as it is now, the tall stones above and the scorched earth below, a carved-out scar of a moment half-forgotten. She dreams of herself, not as she is now but as she was then, held over the blackened pit where the altar once stood, throat too raw to scream or cry, whimpering and moaning as the heat ripples through her body, burning her up from the inside. She’s as helpless in the dream as she was in the reality, but this time she can feel the weight in her boots where her sai are sheathed.

It’s a shimmering thread, a line of hope, and she knows that if she can just reach down a little bit she’ll be able to reach them, that if she can just bring herself to _move_ she’ll be able to defend herself.

This time is not the same as last time. It feels the same, the pain tearing through her now just like it did back then, the heat leaving her dizzy and frightened, but the difference is all around her, as absolute as the flames that hold her in place. Xena’s not here — she never is when Gabrielle dreams about this — but this time she doesn’t care. This time she doesn’t need Xena. She doesn’t need to be saved or caught, and she doesn’t need the warrior princess’s protection. This time all she needs is to reach her sai.

_“You’re so strong.”_

The words come out of nowhere, a ghostly echo in Xena’s voice, in Amarice’s, in Meridian’s, even in Eli’s and Ephiny’s, if only for a moment. They wrap themselves around her, the words and all those different voices, a counterpoint to the flames and the heat and the pain; they should make her feel better, should balm the places where she feels scorched and scarred, but they don’t. They tell her that she’s strong, tell her she impresses them, tell her that she’s _perfect_ , but it’s not true. She’s still paralysed, still suspended, still unable to move or struggle or fight, still unable to do anything at all. Where is all that so-called strength now that she really needs it?

She can’t reach her sai. They’re right there in her boots, right there _on her_ , but she still can’t reach them. Her arms are spread out over her head, locked down and held in place just like the rest of her worthless body, and she can’t pull them free to stretch down, can’t pull any part of her free at all, can’t kick free her boots, can’t lash out with any part of her. The sai might as well be on the other side of the world for all the good they’re doing here, and the futility of it makes her want to scream. It’s not Xena’s fault this time, and it’s not Xena’s failure. It’s _hers_ , and that hurts so much more than anything Xena did or didn’t do back then.

 _“You’re so strong,”_ they tell her, those haunting myriad voices, and Gabrielle tries to tell them that it’s not true but the flames bind her tongue as well as her body.

What good is all that strength, she thinks, when it always fails her when she needs it? What’s the use in being ‘so strong’ when she is never, ever strong enough?

She throws all of her weight behind one last feint, one last kick and thrash and flail, one last worthless dive for her sai. She throws everything she has into it, _everything_ , but it’s still no use, she’s still not strong enough to save herself, still not strong enough to protect herself, still not strong to take care of herself the way she always swore she would. Xena couldn’t save her then, but she can’t save herself now either, so whose fault is it in the end?

The flame surges higher, tightens across her chest, her stomach, her groin; it rises and rises and rises, and with it the pain burns hotter, fiercer, _deeper_ , burns and burns and burns until there’s nothing left at all, until _she’s_ nothing, until—

—until it’s too much, and the heat and the pain and the worthlessness all come together to throw her back to consciousness.

She bolts upright, shivering and soaked in sweat. The blanket is thick and impossibly heavy, weighing her down, tangling and trapping her limbs. It holds her immobilised, just as surely as the fire did in her dreams, her memories. In her unconsciousness she shuffled her way closer and to the campfire; she’s close enough now that she can almost touch it without reaching out, the heat high enough that it would sear the skin if not for the barrier of the blanket. Little wonder that she could feel it so deeply when she dreamed, she thinks, and little that she felt like it was tearing her apart. Another few inches, and it may well have.

Her body feels like something foreign, something somehow beyond her, as it often does when she wakes from a dream as deep and troubled as this one. She’s shuddering, shoulders heaving, on the brink of something horrible, a scream or the need to vomit or choke or cry. She feels like she did that morning when she woke with a sick feeling in her stomach and a sicker one in her soul, when Xena held her close and said that it was normal, when she told her to take herbs and then the banshees told her she was carrying a demon god’s child. She feels almost exactly like she did then, but she doesn’t do any of the things she did back then. She doesn’t scream, doesn’t vomit or choke or cry, and she doesn’t deny the truth.

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to extricate herself from the blanket. She’s almost thankful that Amarice hasn’t come back yet, that her silhouette is still mingling with the strangers’ on the horizon, that she’s still with them, learning things that Gabrielle refuses to believe. She’s glad there’s no-one here to see her now, to catch her and hold her and treat her like the child she wishes she still was.

Back then, the first time they were here, she threw herself into Xena’s arms when she woke from dreams like this, seeking out warmth and comfort and the arms of the woman she loved. She’s grateful that she doesn’t have an opportunity to do that now, because she doesn’t want it. As close as she is to the fire, as hot as the blanket is all around her, the last thing in the world she wants is more warmth, and she doesn’t want the comfort either. Now, so far distanced from the last time, she can’t blame Xena’s preoccupation for her pain or her weakness; she can’t blame anyone but herself, and for the first time since it happened, she finds that she’s ashamed.

She knows that it wasn’t real. She knows that it was just a dream, just the echo of something that happened a long time ago, something that really wasn’t her fault, but still she can’t shake the way it felt. She’s dreamed about this place, that moment, so many times, but this is the first time the weight landed fully on her own shoulders. It’s always been so easy for her to twist the truth into something softer, even in her dreams; it’s always been so easy to find something she can cling to, a tether or a grounding point that says _‘it was something else’_ , but that’s not what is happening now. This time, for the first time, she dreamed that her fate was in her own hands.

It cuts deeper than she’ll ever admit to know that it didn’t change anything.

*

Amarice comes back some time later.

She’s weaving a little, off-balance but not completely unsteady as she crosses the plain and finds their campfire. Gabrielle hopes that it’s just exhaustion — the moon is well on its way down now, the midnight dark giving way to pre-dawn twilight — but one look at her face tells her that’s not the case. She doesn’t need to catch the flush or the glow of her cheeks, doesn’t need to recognise the way her pupils are blown to know what sort of ‘gratitude’ she’s been expressing, and when she opens her mouth to say “Hi,” there’s a definite slur to her voice.

“Hey.” Gabrielle doesn’t even bother to force a smile. “You look like you had a good time.”

Amarice blinks, a little blearily. “Huh?” she mumbles, then shakes her head. “Nah, nothin’ like that. Just… just being polite, or whatever.”

“Sure.” Gabrielle leans in to study her, as she flops down by her side. She slumps rather more than sits, and there’s a goofy grin on her face when she leans in. “And how many cups did you drink in the name of ‘being polite’?”

Amarice scowls; her face the picture of a sullen teenager caught in the act of something they shouldn’t be doing. “None!” she says, far too quickly. “They don’t even do that!”

That’s a surprise, and Gabrielle doesn’t even try to hide it. “You’re joking.”

“Nuh uh, it’s true. Apparently it’s, like, not cool with their gods or something. I dunno. I wasn’t really listening.” The scowl drops from her face then, and she lights up all over again. “But they have this _herb_ …”

“Of course they do.” Gabrielle massages her temples. “That’s just wonderful.”

“Aw, don’t say it like that.” She looks contrite for a moment or two, like she really is concerned about disappointing her, like it really would take a few breaths or swallows of some silly herb to ruin Gabrielle’s opinion of her after everything they’ve been through together. “I _was_ just gonna say ‘thanks’ and then come back… I really was, Gab, I swear it… but they’re good people. They _are_. Kinda… kinda like Amazons, I guess. They… they celebrate stuff a lot. Like, they celebrate _everything_.”

“Good for them,” Gabrielle mutters, but her voice makes it clear that she doesn’t really think so.

“Yeah.” Amarice squints through the firelight, trying to find a fix on Gabrielle’s face. Her eyes are huge, but she’s definitely coherent. “You’d like them. If you gave them a chance, I mean. I really think you’d like them.”

Gabrielle swallows very hard. “That’s not going to happen.”

It comes out much harsher than she means it to. She’s trying to be practical, to point out that they’ll be moving on once the sun is up, that she doesn’t want to linger now that she’s come back to this place and taken what meagre solace she can from seeing it again. She doesn’t want to be here any more; it sounds juvenile in her head, humiliating, but it’s the truth, and she’s trying with everything she has to make that her point. She’s trying so desperately to be the Gabrielle that Xena would want her to be, but all that comes out is the Gabrielle that she is, the Gabrielle who is still too proud to admit that she’s not as strong as everyone — herself included — wants her to be.

Amarice sighs, feeling the harshness and missing the hidden meaning. She leans in a little closer, catches some of the unnatural heat still searing under Gabrielle’s skin. There’s still a slur to her voice when she speaks again, but the words she says carry a pointed sobriety that makes Gabrielle itch, an insight that ignites a new blaze in what small corner of her isn’t already overheated.

“I don’t…” She swallows, leans back to steady herself against the stone; even in this state, she seems to sense the tension in Gabrielle, seems to realise that leaning on her, that touching her at all, is not a good idea. “Gab, this… this version of you or whatever… this person you’re trying to make us all see in you… I’m not sure I like her.”

Gabrielle swallows too, much harder than Amarice. “I’m not sure I like her either,” she admits.

It’s the honesty that stings. Amarice would never say that in her right mind, Gabrielle knows, but she can see in her face that it’s the truth. It sits unpleasantly inside of her, makes her squirm all over. She and Amarice seldom agree on anything; it wasn’t so very long ago that Amarice was sneering and grumbling because Gabrielle opted for peace before violence, because she was so quick to make friends with every ill-meaning stranger they passed. Amarice was the untrusting one, the one who kept a wide berth from anyone who didn’t speak with the sword like she did, and Gabrielle was the one desperately trying to convince her that there was a better way.

This is the opposite of everything they were when they first met. It’s the opposite too, to their fleeting moments back on the boat to Britannia; then, Amarice embraced the change in her, the new ferocity and the way she fought. Now, she’s looking at her as though that was the mistake, as though the pacifist, peace-loving Gabrielle was the one she should have been baying for. Now, all of a sudden, Amarice is the one making friends, the one who smiles and says “thank you” to almost perfect strangers; Gabrielle is the one flinching and shying away from every new face she meets, the suspicious one who doubts every good intention, no matter how true, who wishes that she could draw her sai and solve every problem with them.

She doesn’t like feeling this way, and she hates it all the more because she knows deep down inside herself that Amarice is right. Those people, whoever they are and whatever nonsense they believe about this place, have been nothing but kind and accommodating, and there’s nothing in any one of them to suggest any underlying cruelty at all. She knows that, and the Gabrielle she wishes she still was would have recognised it in a heartbeat; she would have welcomed an opportunity to have her perspective changed, to have this place take on a new meaning in new hands, to find comfort in the idea that it really has become something new and beautiful.

She doesn’t think or feel like that any more. Looking around this place, even as pretty as it is now, she feels hollow not hallowed. It makes her feel sick, makes her feel _angry_ to think that the pain she went through, here and after, can be so easily forgotten, transformed into something else by some tall stones and scorched earth. No-one thought to ask her if that was all right. No-one asked her permission to take that pain — _her_ pain — and twist it into peace. No-one asked her anything at all, and she feels so resentful, so full of hate. She wants to put her sai through every one of those people who decided to transform this place without her consent.

She doesn’t realise that she’s reaching down to grip the handles until Amarice reaches down too, to ease her hands away.

“Hey,” she says with a frown.

Gabrielle closes her eyes, resists the urge to lash out. “I don’t trust them,” she says. Her fingers twitch under Amarice’s palm. She pulls them free, balls them into fists in the dirt. “I don’t trust anyone who could come to a place as ugly as this and turn it into something beautiful.”

“But wasn’t that, like you?” Amarice asks. She sounds so sad about it, as though she can possibly understand what Gabrielle has endured to go from that to this. “The old you, at least. You know, the you I first met. The you that Xena… that she…”

“Don’t talk about Xena,” Gabrielle says. “She’s not here.”

She’s shaking all over, anger and helplessness in almost-equal measure. Amarice takes her wrists, lifts them to her face and kisses her knuckles until they loosen, until her fists are just hands again.

“You didn’t want her here,” she reminds her softly. “And I think… I think it’s more than just this thing where you don’t want to see her in this place that hurt you or whatever. I think it’s more than just _‘she’s busy fighting a war’_ or _‘she wasn’t there when I needed her the last time’_ or _‘she’s so angry and she doesn’t see me’_. You know? I think it’s because she _does_ see you, and you don’t want her to.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gabrielle says, but of course she knows that it’s not.

“Xena loves you,” Amarice says. This time, her voice doesn’t crack on _‘Xena’_ or _‘love’_. It’s stronger than Gabrielle has ever heard it before. “She loves that old you, the one who trusts and cares about everyone, the one who wants to see the best in everything. She loves the Gabrielle who would’ve come here hoping to find people just like this. These people, the crap they believe in… the old you would’ve loved them. She would’ve found peace in them finding peace. And if Xena was here she’d tell you that too. She… she wouldn’t need some stupid Britannia herb loosening her tongue to make her say it. She just _would_. Right to your face. Because that’s who she is. And I… I think you knew that. I think you didn’t bring her out here because you didn’t want to hear it.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Amarice’s pupils are so wide, but she’s not slurring at all any more. She sounds heartbroken, and maybe a little angry herself now too; she sounds just like Xena would if she was here, and Gabrielle hates that more than she can say. “I don’t understand what you’re going through or what happened here or what this place did, or… or any of that stuff. I don’t… I don’t understand _anything_. But isn’t that why I’m here? Because she understands, and I don’t?”

There’s no point in denying it now, so she doesn’t even try. “Yeah,” she says, very softly. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Yeah. And I… I understand _that_. Don’t need to understand the rest. I understand that.” She takes a deep breath, then slowly lets go of Gabrielle’s hands. “Gabrielle, the way she looks at you… it makes the whole world stop. The way she… the way…”

“Don’t.” She’s choking, but there’s nothing in her throat. “Amarice.”

“I don’t wanna see that stop,” Amarice blurts out, ignoring her. The words are like whimpers, so many feelings so close to the surface, and Gabrielle can’t bear the weight of them. “Gabrielle, you and her… you’re so… you’re…” She closes her eyes, overwhelmed. “You’re so _much_.”

Gabrielle closes her eyes too, but for a very different reason. She can’t hear this now. She can’t.

“It’s not what I need,” she says. “Xena. The way she looks at me. The way she tries to protect me. I can’t afford those things. I can’t afford to be that version of me, not here. That Gabrielle suffered here. That Gabrielle was stupid and trusting, and she let her daughter kill Xena’s son. That Gabrielle got dragged away to Caesar’s prison because she was so busy trying to follow someone else’s path that she lost her own. That Gabrielle was weak and helpless, and the one time… the one time Xena needed me to not be _that Gabrielle_ , I got her killed.”

“No.”

“ _Yes_.” She’s shouting now, and not even trying to keep her voice low. “That Gabrielle was never good enough. Her whole stupid life she was never, ever good enough. And then she died, and the Gabrielle that came back…” Her voice breaks, a tremor running though her whole body. “She’s someone else.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” Amarice whispers.

“Yes she does!” She sounds so raw, but still not nearly as raw as she feels. “I have to be stronger now. I have to be tougher and braver and harder than I ever was before. I have to bury that idealistic, trusting, _stupid_ Gabrielle somewhere far away from here, somewhere she’ll be safe.” She takes a deep breath. Her lungs are burning. “You said that I came back more. Well, that’s what I need to be. I need to be _more_.”

Amarice studies her for a very long while. Her eyes are a little unfocused, and she’s swaying where she sits. Gabrielle wonders if they’d be having this conversation at all if she wasn’t under the influence of those herbs she’s been inhaling, if she would have ever found the courage to confront this if she was still in her right mind. She hates herself for wishing that she was.

“You can’t be more if you’re less,” Amarice manages after a moment. No doubt that makes perfect sense to her, but it makes Gabrielle frown and flinch. “You can’t… you can’t take something away from yourself and still come out more at the end. You know? You need… you gotta have both. The you that kicks butt and the you that… that _cares_.”

What she means, what she doesn’t say, is _‘Xena loves the you that cares’_. Gabrielle wonders if perhaps she can’t bring herself to say the words, to make it real, if maybe there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to. She’s caught the look in Amarice’s eyes when she stares at her, wide-eyed and wondering; she’s seen the little indentations in her bottom lip, the places where she’s been biting or chewing, holding something down inside herself, afraid of letting it out. She knows that they’re playing with fire, that the fluttering, healing kisses and breathless laughter are leading one of them down a darker path than the other and, not for the first time, she feels guilty.

“I can’t be that me any more,” she says. “I can’t afford to care like I used to.”

If Amarice hears the deeper, less obvious meaning, she doesn’t show it. “You can,” she says, just as naïve as Gabrielle used to be, back when she was young and had the same wide, wondering eyes. “You just don’t want to.”

Gabrielle doesn’t know if that’s really true. She just knows that for as long as they’re on this island, sheltered in the shadow of this strange stone, it has to be. She can’t want to care, can’t allow herself to want it; if she does, then she _will_ care, and if that happens she’ll drown in the horror of what this place did to her, of what it made her. She’s not afraid of being taken again, of being manipulated or used or brutalised. She is afraid of being so weak, so damn _trusting_ that, once again, she would walk right into it.

“You’re right,” she says, swallowing down acid as the panic rises. “I don’t want to.”

*

They curl up together under the blanket.

Amarice is flushed and warm, drowsy and surprisingly clingy after the argument they’ve just had. She presses herself up against Gabrielle, as close as she can get, and spends quite a while just kissing her.

Gabrielle lets herself blame the herbs for the flood of affection, because it’s better than looking for a deeper truth. She knows better than to take Amarice too seriously when she’s like this, but there’s an unmistakable urgency in the way she kisses her, the way she uses her whole body, and it’s hard to ignore. It’s like she’s trying draw the compassion and the trust out of her by pure force of will, like she believes by showing off how deeply she cares she can somehow compel Gabrielle into caring too.

She can’t, of course. But Gabrielle lets her kiss her just the same.

When she drifts off, barely a few minutes later, Amarice sleeps like the dead. Gabrielle, unable to do the same, lies awake and holds her as she mumbles her dreams.

Whatever it is she’s been eating, drinking, or smoking seems to have loosened her tongue as thoroughly as her body. Amarice is often a very heavy sleeper, but almost never a noisy one. No doubt a product of her Amazon upbringing, she breathes in almost perfect silence, and she never talks in her sleep like Gabrielle does. Tonight, though, she murmurs and babbles against her skin, chattering away like she’s been doing it her whole life. It’s endearing, and it makes Gabrielle feel things she’s been trying valiantly to hold at a distance.

The coherence, such as it is, surprises her. She expects the kind of dream-touched delirium that usually comes with too much drinking or smoking. She expects Amarice to be _Amarice_ , even lost in sleep; she expects her to ramble about swords and soldiers and glory, about all the ways that she and Xena are ‘unstoppable’ when they fight back-to-back. Amarice wears her heart on her sleeve when she’s awake, and when she starts murmuring in her sleep Gabrielle expects more of the same; she expects a fresh glimpse into the headstrong young Amazon who leaped in front of her all those weeks ago. Instead, she gets a wash of grief that steals her breath.

“You’re not…” she mumbles. Gabrielle can’t know for certain that she’s talking to her specifically, but her lips press the words to her collarbones with such intimacy that it’s hard not to think so. “ _I’m_ not…”

“It’s all right,” Gabrielle says absently. Feeling uncomfortably like Xena, she kisses her forehead, her temples, soothes her in all the places she herself likes to be soothed. “It’s okay.”

“No…” It sounds like a reply, and maybe it is. “No, you don’t… you don’t…” She turns her face to the side, agitated, and Gabrielle pulls her in a little closer, runs her hands up and down her back until she settles. “You don’t _understand_. I don’t… I’m not…” The word ends on a choke. She sounds utterly devastated. “I’m not… I’m _not_ … I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabrielle tells her. She doesn’t really know what _it_ is, of course, but the words are true enough just the same; none of Amarice’s minor mis-steps in the time they’ve known each other warrant this kind of apology, the depth of guilt ripping through her, the visible, visceral pain. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Amarice. It’s all right.”

“You don’t… you don’t understand…”

She sounds so wounded, so upset. Gabrielle can’t help herself. “Yes, I do,” she whispers, trying not to think about how sour the lie tastes on her tongue. “I do.”

Amarice sighs, relaxes for just a moment. “I’m sorry…” she mumbles again, and then her lips are higher, finding the pulse on Gabrielle’s throat. “I want…”

It comes out fragmented, like maybe her dreams have carried her to a different place entirely, but still the word choice makes Gabrielle’s heart seize in her chest. Amarice has been open about this; they both have. Gabrielle doesn’t want to think there’s anything deeper, that _want_ might mean what she thinks it does. She doesn’t want to imagine that Amarice would let herself fall into something as damaged and doomed as her. She might not be the brightest Amazon in the world, might do a lot of things that no self-respecting sister would, but she _is_ an Amazon, isn’t she? She understands how things like this work, what they mean and what they never, ever will.

“Amarice.” Gabrielle shakes her head. “Amarice, _I’m_ sorry. I’m not… this isn’t…”

“ _Gabrielle_.” It sounds like reverence, nothing at all like yearning. “I want… so much…”

And in a flash of memory, Gabrielle understands. She doesn’t need to hear any more; she’s said these exact words herself. It’s not about this or them, or any kind of feeling; it’s about something deeper, truer, something that Gabrielle too spent so many years struggling against. The realisation runs very deep, and the recognition deeper still; she has seen so much of herself in Amarice during their time here, but none of it has struck her as hard as this does, this word-perfect echo of the young girl she used to be and the simple, innocent things she used to want.

 _“Take me with you,”_ she begged once. _“I want so much…”_

She takes Amarice’s hand, kisses her knuckles, and finishes for her.

“…to be like you.”

*


	13. Chapter 13

*

They don’t discuss it in the morning.

If Amarice has any idea that she was talking in her sleep, she doesn’t let it show at all, and Gabrielle is familiar enough with that particular embarrassment that she doesn’t bring up the subject herself. Xena always takes a kind of perverse joy in mocking her for the often awkward and occasionally awful things her dreams make her say, endlessly repeating all of her nonsensical ramblings for all to hear, and Gabrielle has no intention of putting someone else through the same torment. Some things are better left unacknowledged.

For all of last night’s wide-eyed slurring, Amarice is surprisingly clear-headed when she wakes, showing no side-effects at all from whatever she ingested. Gabrielle is impressed in spite of herself; she’s never yet found a drink or a drug that didn’t go straight to her head and leave her cursing like a sailor for the vast majority of the following day. Amarice, much like Xena, is apparently nothing like that; she’s reluctant to leave the warmth of the blanket and Gabrielle’s arms, but that’s no different from the way she is most mornings, and when her eyes flutter open they’re completely clear.

“Sleep well?” Gabrielle asks, fishing a little.

Amarice yawns, but she doesn’t sit up. She’s comfortable, fingertips tracing lazy circles over Gabrielle’s exposed midriff, and she doesn’t seem particularly inclined to start the day any time soon.

“Not too bad,” she says with a careless little half-shrug. “I guess.”

Gabrielle smiles a little tensely, and tries to relax into the rhythm of her fingertips. She’s not sure which one of them Amarice is trying to soothe, whether she’s trying to ground Gabrielle in her touch like she did last night under the stars, or whether she’s trying to keep herself calm instead, to soak up what’s left of this and them before it’s taken away in the harsh light of day. Either way, it works; Gabrielle feels like she should put a stop to it, a bitter but necessary reminder to them both that they need to get moving, but she can’t quite bring herself to do it. She’s comfortable too, or as close to it as she’s likely to get in this dark, dangerous place.

Finally, after a few quiet, tender moments, Amarice lifts her head. “What about you?” she asks, a little hesitant. “Guessing you didn’t sleep at all, huh?”

Gabrielle doesn’t bother to deny it. “I slept a little while you were over there.” She keeps her eyes on the sky as she says it, refusing to even glance at the strangers’ camp. Even now, in the clear light of the morning, she can’t stand the sight of it. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to pass out on the road.”

“Good to know.” Amarice hums to herself, a little contemplative. Her fingers go still, splayed flat on Gabrielle’s stomach. “You sure you’re ready to leave, though? I mean, just like that?”

It’s an odd question, and one that Gabrielle hadn’t really thought about before. She came here, to the site of the temple that once brutalised her, she saw what was left of it, and she made what little peace she could with the memories it brought back. What else could she hope to achieve here?

For all her love of the poets and their words, Gabrielle has never really known one of those world-stopping moments of clarity that they write and sing about, that moment when everything around her dissolves into a single point of newfound clarity. She’s never known a moment like that, and she didn’t really expect to find one here. She’s not really sure what she did expect to find, in truth, but she knows that when she looks up and sees the stones still towering above her she’s not completely crushed by them. She didn’t make peace with her past in this place, but she did make something. When she leaves today, she will do so on her own feet and under her own power. It’s so much more than she managed the last time.

The last time, Xena had to carried her out of here. Gabrielle was shaken, shattered, hurting in places she didn’t even know she had; she couldn’t even really stand, much less walk, and for a long time when she tried to speak all that came out was nonsense and tears. Xena held her close, cradled her head against her chest like she was the most precious, fragile thing in the world. Gabrielle remembers how cold she was, shivering when the steel of Xena’s breastplate pressed to the skin of her face. She felt sick and scared and so ashamed; she’d been through so much with Xena, or so she thought, but she had never felt so crippled in her life as she did then. She had never felt such a depth of pain before, her soul broken almost beyond repair even as her body seemed whole.

Honestly, she’d always just assumed that was some kind of bardic metaphor, not to be taken literally at all. Such a strange idea, that a person could hurt so much in places beyond the body, that their emotional pain could be so fierce they couldn’t even stand. She always thought it was supposed to be read as poetic license, until it happened to her and she learned that it was real.

This time is nothing like that. This time she can stand, and when she leaves this place now it will be with her own strength and under her own command. She’s still a little sore inside, but it’s not at all like the pain she endured last time. This pain is physical and tangible; it’s a pain of her own making, hers and Amarice’s, a pain that balmed itself in pleasure, that brought a kind of solace she thought she might never find. This pain is _real_ , and if she turned her body inside-out she knows that she’d be able to mark out the bruises that she welcomed there. She knows that she could prove it to herself: _this is real, look, you can see it_. She couldn’t do that the last time. There was nothing there.

It doesn’t feel like very much. After everything this place put her through, one night and a moment’s pleasure borne of pain isn’t much of a souvenir to take home. But remembering as she does how it felt to be carried, too weak to stand or speak or even really breathe, all of a sudden it feels like a victory in itself just being able to do those things now. She hurts inside, just like she did then, but this time she’s earned the right to call it her own. This time she has the strength and the choice to stand up and walk away.

“Yeah,” she says. Her voice is strong, and her body feels that way too. Sore, yes, but strong. “Yeah, I’m ready to leave.”

*

Boadicea’s horse is very happy to see them.

Gabrielle feels her heart flood with warmth at the sight of him. She’s not really used to that kind of reception from horses. Argo always lights up at the sight of Xena, of course, but she’s never really seen Gabrielle as anything more than an annoyance; her own welcome is lukewarm at best and disgusted at worst. _‘Oh, you’re still here?’_ is about the best she’s learned to expect from Xena’s horse, and it’s more of an ego-boost than she’d care to admit, having a horse that gets excited to see _her_ for a change. Maybe she’s not as bad with them as she’s been led to believe.

She returns his excitement in kind, beaming in spite of her pain when he trots up to her and puts his head in her hands. “Hey, boy! Hey. Have you been a good boy? Did you sleep well?”

“We were gone for, like, a minute,” Amarice grumbles, somewhat less enamoured.

“We were gone for the whole night,” Gabrielle shoots back.

“Minute, night, same freaking difference.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m sure he was just fine.”

“I’m sure he was lonely.” Gabrielle pats him gently, smiling when he whinnies his approval. “Were you lonely, Aloysius?”

Amarice gawks at her, mouth falling open in horror. “ _Aloysius_?”

“What?” Gabrielle lets her smile soften into a kind of quiet affection; she’s not sure who she feels more of it for, Amarice or the horse. “He needs a name. I bet Boadicea never gave him one.”

“Well, sure, but…”

Amarice spreads her arms, caught between disgust and disbelief. Gabrielle can tell that she wants to launch into a great long tirade about all of this, but she seems to catch herself before she can get started. Maybe she notices the way Gabrielle’s actually smiling a little, lit up for the first time since the stones appeared on the horizon, or else maybe she just thinks there are more important things than arguing about an imaginary name for a weather-beaten old horse.

“You know what?” she continues after a moment or two. “Never mind. You’re right. Aloysius is a…” Gabrielle graciously ignores the way she says it through gritted teeth. “Well, uh, I’m sure it’ll grow on him.”

Gabrielle grins, patting his mane. “He doesn’t seem to mind it.”

“He’s a horse,” Amarice says, annoyed and amused at the same time.

“He’s a _good_ horse,” Gabrielle counters. “He didn’t get a choice in this, not like you did. But he came along anyway, and he’s done everything I asked him to do, and he…” She trails of, a little too quickly; this is venturing dangerously close into not-actually-about-a-horse-at-all territory. “Anyway. My point is, he’s a good and loyal steed. Aren’t you, Aloysius?”

She lets it lie there, hopping up onto his back without another word. It’s only when she glances down and finds Amarice staring up at her like she’s just grown an extra head that the thought even occurs to her that it might not be a great idea in her present condition.

“You sure you wanna do that?” Amarice asks. Her expression keeps twitching, like she can’t quite figure out whether to be laugh or frown. “Figured you’d be a little sore. You know, after…”

Gabrielle winces — now that she’s said it, it’s all she can think about — but she doesn’t back down now that she’s up. She is sore, that’s very true, but she’s never been one to let that sort of thing stand in her way and she’s not about to start now. Besides, she thinks, how bad can a few hours on horseback really be? After everything she went through last time, everything her heart and soul are still trying to work through even now, this kind of physical pain has become almost a kind of solace, a grounding point for who and what she’s become. It’s as comforting as it is uncomfortable.

“It’ll be fine,” she says, shifting position just a little to test the truth of it. She definitely, definitely doesn’t suck in her breath.

Amarice shrugs. Of all the things they have to argue about, she’s not about to touch this one. “Your funeral,” she says, and hops up behind her.

It might be — it probably will be later, once they stop for a while and the exertion catches up with her — but at least for as long as she’s sitting up there Gabrielle finds the rhythm of it quite freeing. Certainly there’s a kind of strength to be found in holding the reins, in directing the horse’s speed and course, in being in control of where they’re going and how quickly they get there. It’s a comfort, too, that she can’t really look over her shoulder from here, that she can’t turn around to watch the towering stones and the remains of the temple dissolve into the distance. She can’t look back when she’s riding; she can only look forward.

They ride for a couple of hours, Amarice clinging tightly to her back and Gabrielle keeping her eyes locked on the horizon. The weather is on their side, cloudy and chilly but at least mostly dry, and they cover a decent amount of ground in good time. Gabrielle is in no rush to get back to Boadicea’s camp, to Xena and her seething hatred of all things Roman, but having a destination helps her to stay focused, helps to drive away the shadows of those stones, the memories of scorched earth and the altar that used to cover it. She’s not ready to process it all just yet, and focusing in on the journey means that she doesn’t have to try.

It’s fairly early when they stop for lunch. Gabrielle isn’t particularly hungry herself, but she can feel Amarice’s stomach gurgling and growling where it’s pressed into her back. It’s a good excuse to catch her breath and give her sore muscles some time to recuperate, and in any event she can’t help thinking she owes Amarice a meal or two. She has plenty of reasons to feel guilty; starving the poor girl would surely be a bridge too far.

She dismounts slowly and very gingerly, feeling the pull of pain in her groin and thighs, and by the time she touches down on the ground, Amarice is already shouldering her bow and fumbling in her pack for a hunting knife.

Gabrielle watches her for a moment, realising almost as if from a distance that she doesn’t want it this way. Not this time. She stops her with a hand on her arm and a very serious look on her face.

“I’ll do the hunting,” she says.

She doesn’t know why it feels so important, or so symbolic, but it does.

Amarice blinks a few times. “You sure?” she asks, no doubt more puzzled by the weight in Gabrielle’s voice than the suggestion itself. “I mean, I can do it.”

She’s not worried this time, Gabrielle can tell. She’s not saying this because she thinks Gabrielle is incapable of hunting a couple of rabbits or whatever else might be hiding in the brush, or because she thinks she’s too weak or scared to kill one of nature’s creatures. She’s saying it because _she_ wants to be the one to do it, because somewhere along the line she decided that hunting is her responsibility.

Gabrielle understands that impulse very well. She remembers a moment after they came back from the dead. Xena wasn’t herself, her chakram broken and her memories fractured along with it, and Amarice used _“I’m going hunting”_ as a cover for her own conflicted feelings. She wanted to run away, Gabrielle could tell, to put some distance between herself and a version of Xena that made her uncomfortable. Thinking about it now, Gabrielle realises that it’s something she does often.

It’s not a secret that hunting and scavenging are Amarice’s favourite pastimes; she always seems to come alive at meal times, beaming her brightest when she gets to flex what meagre muscle she has, to strut around and saunter off into the brush with a bow in one hand and a blade in the other. She’s always so desperate to prove her worth, to prove that she does have some after all. Gabrielle wonders sometimes if she thinks that hunting is the only useful skill she has.

“I know you can,” she tells her, letting that be weighted too. “But you don’t have to this time.”

It goes two ways. She wants it for herself, of course, a less-than-subtle reminder that she is still alive, still strong and capable, that she can do so much now that she couldn’t do the last time she was here, but as well as that she realises that she wants to do this for Amarice’s sake as well. Amarice has laid down so much of herself for Gabrielle since they left Boadicea’s camp, has yielded again and again in so many ways that Gabrielle knows she’s not entirely comfortable with. She deserves to know that she doesn’t need to do all those things, that she won’t be sent away if she can’t or doesn’t want to do something once in a while.

It wasn’t so long ago that the they were on the boat together. The moment is vague in her head, grown blurry with distance and the echo of the fever that wracked her, but Gabrielle remembers huddling in the hold to sweat out the infection setting in her shoulder, retching ineffectively at the floor and shuddering through the swelling waves. She remembers Amarice being there then too, holding water up to her mouth, keeping her hydrated and conscious, mumbling apologies for pushing her too hard. It wasn’t so long ago that she confessed, sad and shamefaced, that she just wanted so badly to impress her too, that she was so afraid of being cast aside and seen as worthless.

Amarice has such a hard time believing that she is good enough, and that feeling resonates now just as it did back then, because Gabrielle has never really believed she was worth very much either.

When Gabrielle says _“you don’t have to,”_ what she means is _‘you’re enough just as you are.’_ Amarice, however, doesn’t seem to see it that way. She scowls, defensive in a way Gabrielle wasn’t prepared for, and tightens her shoulders like Xena does sometimes when she’s anticipating an attack from somewhere Gabrielle can’t make out.

“I know I don’t _have_ to,” she says. “But hunting is my thing.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes; she should have expected this. “Well, this time ‘your thing’ can be making a fire and brushing down Aloysius.”

“Pfft. Any idiot can brush a horse. Hunting is an _Amazon_ thing.”

There’s a tremor on the word _‘Amazon’_ , a quaver in her breathing, like this is about more than just hunting, like it’s a symbol for something more significant than Gabrielle can see. She thinks for a moment of pointing out that she’s an Amazon as well, that it should be as much her ‘thing’ as it is Amarice’s, that she has learned not only from Ephiny and her Amazon sisters but from Xena as well. It’s a tempting thought, but she doesn’t do it; why rub salt into an open wound by pointing to all the ways Amarice still has to grow and improve? Why taunt the poor girl into feeling any more inferior than she already does?

“Even Amazons need to switch things up sometimes,” she offers instead, and lets that be a compromise.

“Not in _my_ —”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Gabrielle forces a tight, authoritative grin, the kind that Xena used to turn on her with such devastating effect back in their early days together. “Try something new for a change. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.”

Amarice rolls her eyes. “Doubt it,” she grumbles. “Your stupid horse doesn’t like me.”

Gabrielle likes the sound of that. _Your horse._ It makes her think again of her early days with Xena, of her never-ending conflicts with an over-protective Argo.

“Then think of it as a challenge,” she says, and shows her teeth.

Amarice mutters a few choice curses under her breath but she doesn’t argue any more, and when Gabrielle takes the bow from her hands she lets it go with only minimal whining.

She grips Gabrielle’s by the arm when she turns to leave, though, and holds her in place for a beat or two. Her mouth is halfway open, like she wants to say something else, something that has nothing to do with hunting or her stubborn Amazon pride, something that is clearly very important to her. Whatever it is, though, she stops herself before she can get the words out, throwing Gabrielle’s arm back at her with a frustrated grunt. She’s annoyed with herself, Gabrielle can tell, hating the way her tongue always seizes when she tries to speak, and there’s a defeated slump to her shoulders when she reels away and storms off.

Gabrielle thinks for a moment about chasing after her and pressing this, whatever it is, but she doesn’t do that either. Amarice is actually doing as she’s told for once. Sullen and mysterious or not, that’s all anyone can hope for.

*

It’s a simple, straightforward task, and Gabrielle doesn’t expect it to affect her like it does.

She’s never been a particularly strong hunter, but that shouldn’t really matter. Xena’s taught her how to shoot a bow, how to skin and gut and clean a fish or a rabbit or whatever other game is dropped down in front of her, and she’s never flinched from the task before. True, no-one is idealistic enough to leave their dinner in her hands when there are other options, but that doesn’t matter. It just makes sense that Xena and Amarice do the hunting, or els Joxer barters and trades with local merchants. It just makes sense that Gabrielle’s job is to keep the frying pan clean and in one piece; who else would do it right? It doesn’t reflect badly on her talents.

Besides, it’s not like she _never_ does the hunting. Sometimes the urge to prove herself rises up too sharp to ignore, and she insists on being the one to catch their food for once. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does it’s usually with varying degrees of success or starvation, but it’s definitely not what she’d call rare. There’s no reason for it to affect her at all, much less as viscerally as it does.

The reaction comes out of nowhere. She’s in complete control of herself, body and mind, shouldering the bow with ease and tracking like she’s been doing it her whole life, doing everything just like Xena taught her. When she spots a small deer ducking its head to drink from a spring, it all feels so natural, so effortless. She doesn’t even need to think about it, really, just nocks and looses the arrow without so much as a thought, and when it finds her mark she doesn’t even blink. The beast lets out a shriek and falls to the ground, and Gabrielle watches with a sense of calm, composed detachment.

She’s at its side, then, dropping to her knees and watching with barely a hint of sorrow as its skinny legs kick and thrash. She’s still so perfectly calm as she fumbles for the knife to put it out of its misery, as she pulls it out and lets the dim sunlight glint off the blade. She feels its body give under her hands, feels it go tight and then slack as the poor thing dies. She knows what she’s doing and she is completely perfectly absolutely _calm_ …

…until she looks down and sees the blood on her hands.

She doesn’t know exactly when she started to scream, but she can hear the sound of it echoing horribly in the chill, still air. Her throat hurts; it feels like it’s been shredded, but still the screams don’t stop. They goes on and on, brutal and brutalised at the same time, like she’s the one with an arrow in her side and a knife in her belly, like she’s the one dead and still bleeding even as she’s the one holding the knife, like she’s the killer and the victim and both at the same time, like…

…like she was back _then_ , when she was young and frightened and thought she was doing the right thing, when Meridian was smiling at her with pale, bright eyes, falling back with blood staining her robe. Just like then Gabrielle is the one with the knife in her hand, the one who delivered the killing blow, and just like then she feels like she’s the one who was cut open.

The scream shatters, dies in a choke and a final desperate howl, and then she’s reeling, turning away and staring down at the ground, watching the blood spread when she clenches her fists in the grass, watching the greens and browns turn to red and black where she touches them, the dirt beneath soaking through with blood as she scrabbles and scrambles and scratches for purchase.

She’s retching, then, throat seizing all over again and taking her stomach with it. It’s not like it was back on the ship, heaving in the hold as her fever climbed and her wound healed ever so slowly. It’s like it was after Dahak, waking from those dreams with a churning stomach and a churning soul, sobbing and swallowing back the memories knowing perfectly well that they’re going to overwhelm her anyway. She’s alone out here now with no Xena or Amarice to witness her weakness, but still the shame turns her face hot, vision blurring with angry, impotent tears as she spills herself into the blood-drenched grass.

She screams again when she’s finished. It hurts all over, stomach cramping and bruised, throat dry and razed raw, but she doesn’t stop and she doesn’t care. She hates the feeling, and she hates herself.

 _You did nothing wrong,_ she thinks, an echo of Amarice’s words that rings so hollow now. _They used you, they made you do it, they twisted you into something you were never meant to be. It wasn’t your fault, you did nothing wrong, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t you…_

A part of her knows now, in a way she didn’t back then that it’s the truth, but it’s not about that any more. It’s not the guilt that tears at her insides now, not the horror at her own deeds that turns her inside-out, no more than it was the guilt that turned her stomach back on the ship. She’s made her peace with that, or at least made a feint at it. It’s a different feeling that rises up in her now, that clamps down and makes her stomach surge up into her mouth again, that drives her back down to the dirt and the grass and the blood. It’s a far worse feeling, the kind that takes everything she remembers, rips back the veil and reveals something different, something so much worse.

 _“The things that happened to you…”_ Amarice said, back at the temple, and Gabrielle sobbed because no-one had ever said that before.

She doesn’t sob now. If she does, she knows she’ll never stop.

*

It feels like hours later, though it can’t be more than a few minutes, that she’s brought back to herself by the sound of footsteps, the cracking of twigs, and a familiar blurted out “ _Oh_.”

Gabrielle feels herself blush. She doubts there’s very much colour left in her at this point, but the shame takes on a life of its own just as it always does, and floods the pallor with something stronger and starker. She doesn’t look up, but when she hears Amarice crouch behind her, when she feels the familiar callouses on her palm and fingers when she touches her shoulder, it’s all she can do to keep from turning around and throwing herself into her arms.

She doesn’t turn around, and she definitely doesn’t throw herself into Amarice’s arms. Even in her present state, that would be a humiliation too far. So, instead, she swallows a few dozen times and mumbles, “I killed a deer.”

“Oh,” Amarice says again. Gabrielle can feel the discomfort in her as she she shifts her weight, no doubt getting a good look at the lifeless corpse. “That’s… uh… that’s great?”

It comes out like a question, like she’s not convinced it really is a good thing at all. Gabrielle supposes she understands the reticence; she doesn’t want to know what she must look like right now, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time her body language sent a different message to her words. With more effort than she’d care to admit, she lifts her head and turns to look at her, lets her see some small part of the conflict inside her.

“I’m sorry,” she manages. “I thought…”

She doesn’t need to go any further; the end of the sentence is written all over her face nausea-pale and shame-flushed at the same time. _I thought I could do this. I thought I was better. I thought going to that place would make me whole again. I thought…_

She thought so many things that weren’t true, and she hates that this sort of thing can still happen to her without even a word of warning, that even simple little things she’s done a thousand times can overwhelm her with no rhyme or reason, that even something like this can crash down over her head like a wave. She thought that going to the temple would end it, or at least make it better; she thought that facing the things she went through there would help her to push past them, push through them, push them away. She thought she would be _healed_ , but she doesn’t feel that way at all.

It shouldn’t surprise her. She’s been living under the delusion that she was healed for years now. Before all of this, before Boadicea’s little messenger stumbled into their camp, Gabrielle hadn’t thought about Britannia in a long, long time. Even back when it was fresh and new, there always seemed to be something more important to worry about, something more pressing or painful. She and Xena turned on each other, driven to betrayal and secrecy, and it all became a kind of self-inflicted torture for both of them, something abstract and surreal, painful but nothing like this. 

She’s never really looked at it like this before. She’s never had someone like Amarice to show her a different side of it, a new light cast on the place and the pain, the lens of someone who wasn’t there to navigate the darkness that came after. Gabrielle has never really let herself think of it as something that happened _to her_ , something she was never truly active in. She thought it was enough that it was over; she thought she’d put it behind her, but that changed the instant she heard the word _‘Britannia’_ again and knew that she would have to come back.

She thought it would be easy, thought it would be enough. A few hours under the stars in the temple that hurt her, a few moments’ pleasure to wash away the pain, a few bad dreams while her memory closed that door. It should have been enough, so why wasn’t it? It was a lifetime ago, a world away, on an island she thought she’d never see again. It’s not fair that it’s still crippling her like this, not fair that she can walk away from the temple feeling almost whole and then lose herself a few hours later over something she’s done countless times before and never even flinched.

“I thought…” she whispers again, and stops.

 _That’s your problem,_ her mind tells her, rich in Xena’s voice. _You think too much._

Amarice doesn’t say that. She just says, “I know you did.”

Gabrielle shrugs out of her grip, forces herself to stand though she knows she’s not really strong enough. She’s ashamed of how weak she feels, her legs shaking like water, a rough sea under her body, ready to give out at any moment. She feels like an invalid, like she did in those last few hours on the boat, weak and worn out after all the torments she’d put her body through, feeling it all start to rise up inside of her again when she saw Britannia cresting the horizon at last. She feels like every step she takes in any direction just leads her back to this, nausea and pain and misery.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and cringes at the tremor in her voice.

Amarice doesn’t seem to notice the weakness, or else she’s more compassionate than Gabrielle gives her credit for and deliberately doesn’t mention it. Either way, she shakes her head.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says gently. “You got us lunch, didn’t you? And dinner. For, like, two days at least.”

Gabrielle’s stomach lurches, and she turns away before Amarice can see the colour draining once again from her face. “I’m not very hungry.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” She says it like it’s a joke, like there’s any kind of humour to be found here. There isn’t, of course, but it’s the only weapon she has against something like this. She crouches to study the carcass, the place where the arrow struck and the place where the dagger slid in. “No sense in letting the poor thing to go to waste, though, right? Not after you went to all that trouble taking it out. And, hey, I know you’ve got that whole _‘don’t let its death be in vain’_ thing going on…” She musters a smirk, but it’s about as wan as her humour. “Be stupid not to get something useful out of it.”

It would. That’s true. Gabrielle swallows, and gestures weakly at the deer. “You’re carrying it, then,” she says. “I don’t want to look at it.”

Amarice touches her arm. There’s a little smear of blood on the side of her hand from where she brushed over the carcass, tracing the lines where Gabrielle’s weapons cut it open. It makes Gabrielle feel ill all over again, makes her want to start screaming and not stop this time. _Don’t touch me,_ she thinks. _I have enough blood under my skin already. I don’t want any more. I don’t want any blood from you._

“Gabrielle, listen.” There’s an odd kind of strain to her voice, and Gabrielle sees it in her face as well, lines that run deep. They weren’t there just a few days ago, she thinks, and feels guilty. “I know you have this whole… I know you said this place is where you killed for the first time and all. I get that it’s hard to do that with Romans or people or… or even some dumb animal or whatever. You know, it’s hard, killing stuff if it… if it means something more. But it’s not… you’re not a killer just because you’ve killed. You know?”

“I know,” Gabrielle says. It’s true. “I’ve done it before. I don’t really know why I reacted like that. I don’t…”

She trails off, shaking her head, but it’s enough. 

“It’s because you’re all sensitive and stuff,” Amarice tells her, like it’s obvious. “You feel everything.”

Gabrielle forces a rasping, dry-throated chuckle. “That’s true,” she says. “I do feel a lot.”

“You do, yeah. And it… I think that’s why you are the way you are. You know, like, it’s why you get all seasick and miserable on a boat or whatever… but then, it’s why you can fight like you do too.”

Gabrielle doesn’t understand what either one of those things have to do with the other, or what they have to do with how deeply she feels and reacts to things. She doesn’t bother pretending that she’s anything other than completely baffled.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s not hard,” Amarice snorts. Still, she lights up as she says it, excited to finally be the one with the explanations and not just the questions. “It’s like I said: you feel _everything_. The way the deck moves on a ship, or the way the air moves when someone’s coming at you with a sword. You see? Doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s moving, it’s gonna move you.”

“That’s poetic,” Gabrielle muses.

Amarice shrugs. “Not really. Just the way it is. It’s not good, but I guess it’s not bad either. Or, well, sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s both or neither, or… whatever. It’s just whatever the situation is.”

It’s an interesting way of putting things, Gabrielle thinks, and an interesting way of looking at her. She’s not sure whether to be flattered or hurt, so she settles for just mumbling, “Maybe.”

Amarice smiles. “Yeah. And this…” She gestures at the blood still staining Gabrielle’s hands and the grass at their feet. “C’mon. That’d be a nightmare for anyone. Even Xena. Even _me_. You know, if I was having a bad day or something…” Gabrielle rolls her eyes at that, and Amarice beams, proud that she got a reaction, that it wasn’t a bad one. “I’m just saying, if it’d be a nightmare for us, all warrior-like and stoic and _‘grr’_ , it’s gotta be like a dozen of ’em for someone like you, with all those feelings.”

Gabrielle sighs, shakes her head a little. “I wish my feelings were better at handling themselves.”

“I don’t,” Amarice says. She sounds very serious now. “They’re good for you. I mean, when they’re not turning you inside-out or making you run after long-haired weirdos on the path of whatever. But it’s like…” She sighs; Gabrielle doesn’t push her. “I used to think all that feelings stuff made you weak. All that ‘peace and love’ Eli crap, and you not picking up a weapon because it’s the wrong ‘way’ or whatever. I thought it made you stupid, but it doesn’t. You feel all that stuff now, just like you did then. Exactly the same. But now it makes you _strong_.”

There’s that word again, the one Gabrielle has tried to wrap around herself, the one that Xena is just now starting to see. _“You’re so strong,”_ she said, and Gabrielle thought, _you’re the only one who doesn’t see it._ She thinks back to the day after they came back from the dead, to picking up the sai and holding them in her hands, to imagining them in Xena’s and thinking about how powerful, how graceful she would look with them. She never expected to end up using them herself, and she definitely never expected that to be the moment someone else saw her strength.

 _“You impressed me,”_ Amarice confessed on the boat, and for the first time Gabrielle looked down at herself and realised that yes, someone was saying those words to her and yes, that meant she could be impressive after all.

There’s a difference between impressive and strong, though, and it doesn’t sit nearly as comfortably now as it did on the ship. Gabrielle has faltered too many times since they docked here, and it’s hard to feel strong when her throat is razed raw from screaming and crying. She wants it to be true, wants to look down at herself again and believe it, but at least for right now she’s not sure that she does.

“I try to be.” It’s not as honest as she’d like, but it’s as close as she can get without risking another breakdown. “I try.”

“You _do_ ,” Amarice tells her, without hesitation. “So you can’t handle gutting a deer on the island that gutted you? So what? I don’t know if I could handle it either. But I’m not the one who has to, am I? So it doesn’t matter what I’d do. I’m not the one who got gutted here, Gab, you are. So you… you gotta deal with it whatever way you can. Not my way, or Xena’s way or Eli’s way or what-the-heck-ever. _Your_ way. With all your feelings.”

Gabrielle musters a chuckle. “You make it sound so easy,” she says.

“Nah,” Amarice says. “It’s definitely not easy.” She’s looking down at the ground as she says it, though, like the words are a weight on her shoulders, like she’s exhausted from carrying them. Gabrielle wonders if she’s exhausted from carrying her as well. “But that’s okay, right? Because you’re strong?”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to deny that, to voice any of the thousand doubts running through her head right now. A part of her knows that it’s true, knows that Amarice is right, but it’s not so easy to believe it when her body is so weak, when her legs are shaking under her, when her throat and her stomach and her hands betray her at every turn. It is so hard to believe the things she knows about herself when her body is saying something else entirely.

She doesn’t get the chance, though, to say those things aloud. Amarice lifts her head, and when Gabrielle catches the light in her eyes all speech vanishes from her head. There’s such faith in her, such absolute certainty; it steals Gabrielle’s breath away, and leaves her battling a very different kind of weakness.

Amarice is looking at her now like these things aren’t questions, like Gabrielle’s strength isn’t something a few doubts or bad experiences will ever take away from her, like she _is_ strong and that’s all there is to it. She looks at her like the strength is ingrained so deep inside of her, like it’s such a fundamental part of who she is that she will never, ever be anything else. Looking up at her, seeing all that reflected in her eyes, hearing every word of it without a sound, Gabrielle can almost believe that it’s true as well, even now, feeling like this. She can almost believe that she really will overcome it.

She lets the doubt fall away from her, like a shawl or a coat or the leaves from the trees. They won’t die, she knows, but she can set them aside, tuck them away in that battered corner of her mind where she can’t reach, the place where all her other dark thoughts hide. They’ll come out again, just like they did this time, swim and surge to the surface and rain down on her until her limbs give out and her body rebels all over again. They will; they always do. But until it happens, she will hear the words she finds in Amarice’s eyes and she will believe them.

“It’s okay,” she echoes, and bends to wipe the blood from her hands. “Because I’m strong.”

*

Amarice takes care of the deer.

That’s just fine with Gabrielle. The sight of the thing still turns her stomach, still makes the screams lodge in her chest, lungs bursting against her ribs, pain like the rasp of rust on stone. She doesn’t watch as Amarice skins and guts and cleans the thing, doesn’t watch as she cuts it up and turns its body into meat and cooks it slowly over the fire.

It was probably a fair estimate when she said there’s probably a couple of days’ worth of food on the carcass, and Amarice is very meticulous in getting it all. She’s not the best at this sort of thing, always balking when Xena hands her fish or rabbits to gut, but with larger game like this she’s surprisingly good at gleaning everything she possibly can. There’s no real shortage of food sources out here, but Amarice is just like Xena in her frugality and she always insists that they get the most out of what they kill. She’s not often practical, Gabrielle knows, but in this at least she learned from the best.

She eats sparingly, albeit still rather more than Gabrielle does, then she salts what’s left and stows it away in one of their bags. She doesn’t look at Gabrielle very often, leaving her to her privacy and her thoughts, but she’s soft all over in the rare moments when she does, letting a kind of tenderness bleed into what she’s doing, flowing from the parts of her that are usually as savage and guttural as Xena.

“You did good,” she says after a long, easy silence. “Probably won’t need to hunt again for days now.”

“I thought you liked hunting,” Gabrielle muses.

Amarice flushes, eyes on the ground. “I like you better.”

It’s innocent, her usual sullenness mingling with an unguarded depth of affection, and it makes Gabrielle blush a little too. “That’s very sweet,” she says softly. “Amarice, you know I—”

“Yeah, I know.”

Whether she really does — whether she even knows where the sentence was going — or simply wants Gabrielle to believe that she does, it’s hard to tell, but she says it in earnest and doesn’t let Gabrielle finish her thought. Gabrielle doesn’t push; she’s not sure she wants to have this conversation anyway.

“Good,” she says.

Amarice grunts, scuffing the dirt with her toes. “Looks like the weather’s gonna turn again,” she says, apropos of nothing. “Better get going if you wanna get anywhere before it hits.”

Gabrielle doesn’t ask how she can tell what the weather’s like when her eyes are on the ground. Sometimes it’s best to just play along.

*

Amarice takes the reins this time.

They don’t really talk about it or make it into a discussion; it just sort of happens. It’s definitely not Gabrielle’s idea — she’s enjoying, perhaps a little too much, the company of a horse who does what she tells him to — but she doesn’t complain when Amarice hops up in front of her. She’s sore and her stomach isn’t settling very well, and she can’t stop thinking about what happened with the deer. She knows herself and her limits well enough by now to recognise that all those things combined will leave her distracted and unfocused, and she’s not about to put them in danger for the sake of her oversized ego.

The weather is definitely not good, but it doesn’t turn bad like Amarice said it would. There’s a haze of drizzle, cold and far from pleasant, but it doesn’t break into a proper rain, and it doesn’t hinder their visibility too much. It’s safe enough, at least, for an amateur rider like Amarice to make good time, and the fine wet mist makes Gabrielle think of the morning they set out from Boadicea’s camp, the two of them walking and talking and Aloysius content to tag along behind them. The mood very was different then; Gabrielle, feeling small and frightened, set a slow, almost glacial pace because she was so afraid of their destination. Now, in vibrant contrast, they ride without mercy, if not in a gallop at least close to one, both more concerned about what they might have missed than what they might find when they get back.

Amarice isn’t a natural equestrian, and the journey reflects that, jostling and bumpy and generally unpleasant. Gabrielle has never been particularly comfortable on horseback herself, at least not when the horse in question is Argo, but she and Aloysius have developed a pretty natural rapport by now, and they work together fairly well when she’s the one with the reins. They treat each other with a kind of mutual respect, the kind Gabrielle has never had from Argo, and provided she doesn’t push him too hard he seems pretty happy to do what she says.

With Amarice directing them, it’s the opposite; she’s an aggressive rider, always needing to be in control, desperate in that youthful warrior sort of way to show the horse who’s boss. So, naturally, he shows her that he is.

Pressed against Amarice’s back, arms locked around her middle, Gabrielle can feel the tension in both of them, the rider and the horse; Aloysius is as stubborn as Argo, refusing commands and doing the opposite of what he’s told, and Amarice draws a little closes to tears every time he resists her authority. Were she feeling just a little more like herself, Gabrielle might find it hilarious, but as it is she just wishes the two of them would just put their differences aside and learn to get along.

Idly, she wonders if Xena ever feels that way about her and Argo.

As though sensing her thoughts, Amarice turns her body a little, shifting to look at her. It’s maybe the seventh or eighth time in the last four minutes that they’ve changed direction for no discernible reason, and Gabrielle can tell that she’s just about at her wits’ end when she mutters, “You _sure_ you don’t wanna drive?”

Gabrielle presses her nose between her shoulder blades to hide the smile. “You’ve got to learn some time,” she says.

“Yeah, right,” Amarice huffs. “I know how to ride a horse. This one’s just a brat.”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to say, _‘sounds like someone else I could name,’_ but the words catch in her throat, and she finds herself choking on dust before she can say it, dryness and dirt and an unexpected wave of feeling. She’s not really sure where it comes from, but it rises up inside of her like something tangible, like something with teeth and sharp claws, and it cuts off not just the words and the laugh that would have gone with them, but her breath as well. She turns her face to the side, feels the sweat pricking her forehead.

“He’s a good boy,” she says, but all of a sudden it doesn’t come so easily.

“Knew you’d say that,” Amarice gripes. “Your little ‘Aloysius’ or whatever. You two are, like, best buddies now or something, just because you gave him a name.”

Aloysius tosses his head a little, though it’s hard to tell whether he agrees with the sentiment or just wants to frustrate Amarice even more than he already has. Gabrielle knows that she should be laughing at both of them, but she can’t quite manage it.

“Amarice…” she starts, but realises a moment too late that she has nothing to say.

Amarice acknowledges with a grunt, reaching behind her for some kind of contact. “You okay?” she asks, more curious than genuinely worried this time. “You’re not falling, are you?”

“Not from the horse,” Gabrielle mumbles, and wonders where in the world that thought came from. “I mean, uh… be quiet and focus on the road.”

Amarice huffs again; Gabrielle can feel the vibration all through her. It makes her chest feel tight, makes her throat close up again, and she doesn’t know why. It makes her cling a little harder, face pressed against her skin; it makes her think of the early days when she would ride behind Xena on Argo, when Xena was in control and Gabrielle was young and a little afraid, uncomfortable being so high up from the ground, as wary of Argo as Argo was of her. It makes her remember the way Xena would reach back in moments like this, hold her with one hand and tug on the reins in the other, in perfect control in every moment, like it all came so naturally, so simply to her.

It doesn’t come that way to Amarice at all, or to Aloysius when he’s supposed to be listening to her. Gabrielle can feel the animosity rippling through them both, the tightness in Amarice’s limbs and her body, the way she shifts and the way Aloysius tenses and tugs at the reins. Gabrielle feels like she’s caught in the middle of someone else’s fight, and experience has taught her that there’s only one way this sort of thing will go. It’s only a matter of time before something gives, and when it does she knows it will be messy.

The moment comes about half an hour later, just as Gabrielle is about to give in and ask for a break.

All three of them are distracted. Amarice is tugging on the reins, yanking them just a little too hard in a futile bid at urging the horse to go where she wants, and Aloysius is pulling more than a little too hard in the opposite direction, just to be contrary. Gabrielle, being not particularly enamoured by the thought of being bucked off the back of a moving horse just so one or the other of them can prove a point, is just about to open her mouth and intervene when something comes flying out from the brush and onto the road in front of them.

Gabrielle has about half a second to think that one of them really, _really_ needs to swerve out of the way, and then it’s too late, and they hit with the kind of violence she thought didn’t really exist outside of the theatre. The world turns upside-down for about half a second, or maybe an hour, everything swirling into a great churning mess, and then there’s a deafening _crash_ and the sharp pain of impact, and then her mouth is full of dirt.

It’s a long moment before the pain dulls and world stops spinning, and a much longer one before the ringing in her ears dies down into something manageable. She’s been thrown from Argo enough times by now to recognise the disorientation and the headache and shake it off; it’s just a few short seconds before she’s back on her feet, ignoring the hammer-like pounding that says she probably should have stayed down a little longer.

A quick glance tells her that Aloysius is fine, if startled. He’s still on his feet, which is more than she can say for herself, but that’s all the time and attention she can afford to give him. She whirls, a little dizzy, trying to make out the thing in the road that hit them.

It’s not a _what_ , she realises, but a _who_ , a body lying face-down in the dirt and not moving at all, and though she knows better than to let herself get distracted, still for just a moment or two she finds herself choking back a fresh wave of panic, almost knocked down by the same horrible feeling that hit her earlier.

 _Not again,_ she thinks, forcing back the feeling, forcing herself to focus. _Please, not again. Please, don’t be dead. Please, please, please…_

He’s not dead, blessedly, but it’s a pretty close thing. It’s a Roman soldier, blood and bruises all over his face, and though she knows she should be horrified by the sight, still Gabrielle can’t help the flood of relief that nearly kicks her legs out from under her. Battered and beaten is one thing, but there are a dozen or more far uglier outcomes from a collision like this, and she’s just grateful to see him breathing. She doesn’t think she could face another death today. Even a Roman one.

“Thank the gods,” she hears herself whisper.

“Thank nothing!” Amarice is on her feet too, and she’s not nearly as happy about any of this as Gabrielle is. She’s at her side in a heartbeat, kicking the Roman in his already-bloodied face. “Bastard!”

“Amarice, don’t!”

Amarice ignores her, though she doesn’t kick the soldier again. She’s rubbing the back of her head now, visibly peeved and in some measure of pain, but she doesn’t bother to check herself over. Gabrielle really hopes she didn’t hit her head too hard when she fell from the horse. The last thing either of them needs right now is a concussion.

“Dammit,” Amarice is muttering, to herself not Gabrielle. She keeps the pain out of her voice as best she can, but lets it run thick with spite, and when she looks around it’s with heavy-lidded eyes, like the sunlight is causing her pain. “Where the heck did he even come from?”

Gabrielle glances up at the sky. There is no sunlight. “Are you hurt?” she asks.

She tries to reach for her, to check for herself, but Amarice slaps her hand away with an impatient growl. “Not now,” she snaps. “Those bastards never travel alone. If there’s one, there’s gotta be more. We need to find—”

“No, you don’t.”

They both whirl around, in almost perfect sync. Gabrielle’s vision blurs, fading to white for a few long seconds as the movement leaves her dizzy, but that doesn’t really matter; she doesn’t need to see the face right away to know exactly what she’ll find when her head clears. She knew it from the first syllable, maybe even before that, and when the weight of a familiar calloused hand drops down onto her shoulder, the reaction comes as automatically as it always has in moments like this, surprise and disbelief coloured by a love she doesn’t even try to hide.

“ _Xena_!”

*


	14. Chapter 14

*

It is Xena, but a Xena who looks as changed as Gabrielle feels.

She’s still so angry, but the rage feels changed somehow, less intense and more controlled, and when she brushes past to deal with the Roman soldier, as ruthless and cold as she ever is in her darkest moments, it’s with a different kind of ferocity. Before, back at Boadicea’s camp, she was a simmering cauldron of violence, a flash fire just waiting for the right spark to set her off; Gabrielle was afraid, knowing as intimately as she does what Xena is capable of when that feeling takes hold, and she was worried about what that anger might compel her to do do. Now, she seems more restrained, almost more private. It’s a quiet kind of fury that burns in her now, not a cataclysm but a whispered threat. It’s just as worrying as before, but not nearly so frightening.

Xena doesn’t kill the Roman. Gabrielle might be thankful for that if she thought for even a second that it was for her benefit. It’s not, though; Xena just doesn’t want to waste her time on the task. She lifts the poor bastard off off the ground by his neck, brings his face in close enough to study it, then, when she’s convinced that he won’t be waking up any time soon, tosses him back down like so much firewood.

“Xena?” It’s Amarice who says it this time, keeping a safe, respectful distance.

“The one and only.” Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been shouting or screaming — dear gods, Gabrielle hopes she hasn’t been screaming — and she answers Amarice as though she never heard Gabrielle call her name at all. “He should be the last of them. The rest got theirs, don’t you worry.”

Amarice eyes the soldier, then looks at Xena with the same fire that Gabrielle sees simmering in Xena. “Good,” she mutters, and spits on the ground.

Gabrielle turns her face away. She can’t bear the sight of either of them right now.

“Xena, what are you doing here?” she asks, eyes on the ground. “I thought you were going to stay with Boadicea to help with the fight against Suetonius.”

“Fight’s over, Gabrielle.”

She says it very simply and without feeling, like she’s reading it from a parchment, but Gabrielle knows her too well to believe that it really is so simple. The hoarseness is rasping in her throat again, twisting her voice to something strange, something almost strained, something Gabrielle hasn’t heard from her in a very long time. It makes her chest go tight, heart racing in a panic.

“Xena?” she whispers again, then, already sure that she doesn’t want to know, “What happened?”

Xena doesn’t answer her. Gabrielle didn’t really expect her to, though that doesn’t make it any less infuriating; they know each other well enough by now to know that she’ll have to drag it out of her, that this is Xena’s way of preparing her for bad news. It’s always worst when they’ve been separated for a while, when Xena has been left with no company but her memory of the Gabrielle she used to know, the one who was fragile and squeamish, who would break every time she heard something painful. Gabrielle wants to shake her, wants to draw a map of all the painful things she’s already been through without breaking. _Don’t hide this from me,_ she thinks. _I can take it._

Still, though, Xena tries. “You look thin,” she says, then turns to Amarice. “Have you been feeding her?”

Gabrielle grabs her by the shoulder, forces her to turn back. She doesn’t actually shake her, but it’s close. “Don’t change the subject,” she snaps. “What happened?”

Xena looks down at her hands, the knuckles white against her leathers. She counts out the tension in her fingers, the tightness of her muscles, the way that every part of her is screaming that she won’t back down. She sighs, then asks, very quietly, “What do you think happened?”

Gabrielle sighs as well. She remembers sitting in front of a fire, talking with Boadicea about her people; she remembers telling her how loyal they were and how much they respected her. She remembers later, too, and the way Boadicea looked at her, stoic and strong even in a moment of compassion, remembers the fondness in her when she said that Gabrielle was good for morale, that her people appreciated having someone around who was willing to listen, willing to try and understand them. Boadicea is a good leader, Gabrielle thinks, a caring one, a compassionate one. Little wonder she and Xena clash so often.

She says the name aloud — “Boadicea?” — transforming it into a dreadful question, and watches Xena’s face very, very carefully.

“You know the answer,” Xena tells her, with no small measure of accusation.

“No.” She shakes her head. Her legs suddenly feel very weak. “Not…”

“Yes.” Xena’s eyes are very dark, her body shaking ever so slightly as she pulls free from Gabrielle’s grasp, more to steady herself than anything else. “We’re done here.”

Gabrielle shakes her head, whispers, “ _No_ ,” again like a plea, a prayer that this isn’t true, that even if the battle is lost, still the soldiers might have survived, but when she repeats it a third time it grows into something else, gains power and force, and before she even really realises what she’s doing she sees herself lunging after Xena, grabbing her again.

“No!” she shouts, loud and desperate, and this time she does shake her. “No, don’t you walk away from me! You… you tell me what happened!”

Finally, Xena looks her in the eye. The anger is there on the surface now, brought out by Gabrielle’s rare moment of violence; it’s very hot, out of control like it gets only very rarely. Gabrielle is almost driven back by it, scared in a way she never allows herself to feel about Xena, but she doesn’t allow herself to back down or show any sign of it on the surface. Whether she knows the answer or not, she needs to hear it. She needs to hear Xena say it.

Xena does. She turns away, pulls free of Gabrielle’s grip like it’s nothing, clenches her fists at her sides, and says it.

“They didn’t stand a chance.” Her voice is hollow, the way it is sometimes when she’s trapped inside a terrible memory. It gives away none of the anger that Gabrielle knows is still there, just a weary kind of bitterness. “She knew it. She knew it the whole damn time.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Amarice volunteers. It’s peculiar, hearing that kind of optimism from her. Gabrielle knows that she never really had much faith in Boadicea’s methods. “I mean, we all know she thought the odds were stacked. But I’m sure she didn’t—”

“She knew,” Xena snarls. She turns back to Gabrielle, then, and the fire ignites again behind her eyes. “Why else would she have done what she did?”

That’s all she needs to say, and Gabrielle knows. She hears the words between the words, sees the dark, twisted place they come from, and she feels her legs buckle beneath her. She doesn’t have the time to stop it; the strength is already bleeding out of her, her body already starting to fall as her imagination paints in countless colours the story so that Xena doesn’t have to tell. It’s too real, too soon, and the only reason she doesn’t hit the ground is because Amarice sees her start to slide and steps between them to hold her upright.

“Take it easy,” she says. She’s said that so much lately; Gabrielle wishes that she didn’t still need to hear it.

Xena is clenching her jaw, eyes blazing, locked on Gabrielle like she’s waiting for an apology, like she knows that Gabrielle played a part in this. Gabrielle shakes her head, buries her face in Amarice’s shoulder, as though she can hide from the truth if she hides herself away from Xena’s violent eyes.

She hates the way Xena is looking at her, so full of anger and disgust. She hates the fact that she can’t feel the same way, that this is something they will never, ever agree on. It stings, of course, to know that Boadicea is dead, that they came here for nothing, that all the pain they went through did no good in the end, but Gabrielle understands, now more than she ever has before, how powerful the difference is between _what she did_ and _what happened to her_. Apparently Xena still doesn’t.

 _What she did_. Gabrielle swallows hard, catches the memories in her throat when they rise. She remembers sitting with Boadicea, talking with her, remembers the haunted look on her face when she handed over the pouch full of poison, the way she confided in Gabrielle, and trusted her to hand it out to her men. She remembers thinking, _I understand_ , remembers knowing that Xena wouldn’t, even before she found out about it and lost her temper.

 _What she did,_ she thinks again now, and the meaning turns the hurt into something a little less brutal. Even at the very end, Boadicea wouldn’t let a Roman end her life. She’d take it herself first.

“I’m sorry,” she hears herself say, but the truth is that she’s not. She knows, as Boadicea did, as Xena should, what would have awaited her if she hadn’t done _what she did_. “At least she didn’t—”

“No!” The word is a roar. “No! Don’t you dare excuse her. Don’t you _dare_!”

But Gabrielle won’t be silent on this. She won’t let Xena leave this place hating a woman who is no longer here to defend herself. She won’t let Boadicea’s voice be taken from her. She took her own life rather than let it fall into the hands of people who would twist it for their purposes, and Gabrielle will not let that choice be in vain. She will not let it be tainted, not even by Xena, not even by a Xena who so desperately needs a scapegoat for her rage.

“Xena,” she says, very slowly. “Xena, you know what Rome does to its prisoners. You went through it yourself. If you’d had a choice before we were crucified to end it painlessly, wouldn’t you…”

She trails off, though, before she can finish. The look in Xena’s eyes is truly terrible, rending her soul from her body, and the sight of it rends her mute. Even now, even knowing how important this is, still she can’t stand to disappoint her. Even now, even with _this_ , she can’t bear to have Xena thinking that she’s—

“ _Weak_.” The word slips between Gabrielle’s ribs like a blade, as effortless as any other weapon in Xena’s hands. “Boadicea was weak, Gabrielle. She was a damned worthless coward, so obsessed with not dying at Roman hands that she never even bothered to fight for her life. She knew how it would end before it even started. She was prepared to die, and that’s why she did.”

“I don’t think…”

“No, you don’t.” She throws up her hands and turns away again. Free from her searing gaze, Gabrielle lets herself slump back, shaking, against Amarice. “You can’t go into battle assuming you’ll be defeated before you even start! You can’t go to war expecting to die!” Her voice cracks. This is more personal than she will ever admit, even to Gabrielle. “She dragged me back here to help her against Rome, but she’d already decided we didn’t stand a chance. With my help or without it, she sealed her own death long before she ever drank that poison.”

Gabrielle shakes her head again, though she knows that Xena won’t see it. She understands that it’s not as simple as that, but she understands just as well that trying to convince Xena right now would be like spitting into the rain.

Xena is a warrior, and a former warlord. The only thing she’s ever allowed herself to know is victory. Boadicea was nothing like that; she’d tasted defeat before, too many times, and not least of all by Xena’s own hand. Gabrielle understands how it feels to be on the losing side, to look around and see there’s no escape anywhere. Xena doesn’t. For her, insurmountable odds are just a greater challenge, and she will never, ever understand that it just doesn’t work that way for everyone.

“You can’t will yourself into winning,” Gabrielle hears herself mumble, and she knows before the words are even out that it’s the wrong thing to say. “Xena, sometimes it’s just inevitable.”

“You weren’t there.” There it is again, the razor edge of accusation. Xena so rarely talks to her like that, and when she does it cuts very deep. It knots in Gabrielle’s chest, makes it hard to breathe. “You didn’t _see_.”

The truth of it takes the fight out of her, and with it what’s left of her breath. She remembers the way Boadicea encouraged her to leave, to _“revisit the place that haunts you”_. It seemed so natural at the time, so organic after an afternoon spent handing out poison to cock-eyed soldiers, an afternoon spent swallowing back her own experience, her memories of the poison that killed her daughter. She was so tired, cut open by Xena and her rage, her post-battle frenzy and the things she needed from her, almost shut down with the guilt that came afterwards, when she came back to camp and overheard the two of them arguing about it.

She hadn’t thought about the strangeness of it at the time. Boadicea, willing to waste precious time and resources to find and recruit Xena, didn’t even think twice about sending an able-bodied woman away at a critical moment. She never even thought to ask, _‘why do you want me to leave now when I can fight as well as anyone here?’_. She’d just assumed that Boadicea was seeing, as Xena still was, the Gabrielle from two years ago, the green young girl who didn’t know a sword from a hole in the ground, or else that the damaged shell of a thing that came back from Dahak’s temple, crying and trembling in Xena’s arms. Whatever her reason, it seemed logical enough; it never occurred to Gabrielle to look deeper.

It does now, and the truth of it almost sends her down to her knees. It probably would, if Amarice wasn’t there keeping her upright. Boadicea didn’t send her away to face her troubled past or her memories of the temple; she sent her away to shield her from what she knew was coming. Just like Xena, looking her in the face and saying _“I’d send you back there in a heartbeat,”_ Boadicea did exactly that, sent her away to keep her safe, a helpless little thing who had seen so much horror on Britannia already. She looked down at Gabrielle, just as Xena always did, and saw someone who wasn’t strong enough to face any more.

She doesn’t know whether to be grateful for that or to resent her. Not that it makes any difference in the end, she supposes; either way, Boadicea is out of her reach now.

“Xena…” she hears herself whimper, because she at least is still here.

Xena turns to study the horizon. Her face in shadow, expression unreadable. “It’s done,” she says, a command far more than a statement. “It’s over.”

Aching all over, Gabrielle wishes that she could see it that way.

*

To no-one’s surprise, Xena steps back into the role of leader as though she never left.

Gabrielle doesn’t argue, though a part of her wants to. She keeps her mouth shut and follows dutifully behind, just like she always has. She feels tense, uncomfortable; this wasn’t the reunion she’d wanted, and she doesn’t know what to do or how to feel about that. She’s supposed to be throwing herself into Xena’s arms, but she doesn’t want to do that right now, and she can tell at a glance that Xena doesn’t really want it either.

For a moment or two, Gabrielle wanted nothing else in the world. In the instant she heard her voice, the instant her vision cleared and she saw her face, she had never felt so desperate to hold her, but now all she see whens she looks at her is someone who would condemn a friend to crucifixion or torture before she would let them take their fate into their own hands.

Amarice, no doubt sensing some of that tension, plants herself as a barrier between them. It’s a challenge not to wonder how much of that is because she doesn’t want to risk letting them get too close to each other in their present moods, and how much is the part of her that isn’t ready yet to surrender her claim to Gabrielle.

They don’t talk about that. They don’t really talk about any of it. Xena doesn’t ask how things went at the temple, if Gabrielle is all right, if Amarice took care of her, or whether or not they missed her. Perhaps she’s still shaken from her own experience, not wanting to focus in on someone else’s pain while she’s still working through her own, or maybe she just realises that now is not the time to talk about it.

Gabrielle has always been a little too open, has always worn her heart a little too much on her sleeve, her soul and her feelings lit up on her face even when she tries to keep them hidden, and Xena has always been an expert in reading her. She must be able to see the places where she’s sore and raw, not just physically but emotionally, the wounds that still won’t heal despite her best efforts here. She knows that Gabrielle had her own reasons for not wanting her to come along, and for choosing Amarice instead; she has to realise it has nothing to do with _’you’re busy fighting a war’_. She has to know all of that, because she doesn’t say a word.

Amarice keeps one hand on Gabrielle’s arm, the other on the hilt of her sword. Gabrielle is long accustomed to this by now. Normally she finds the contact comforting, but with Xena here now it feels very different, like something she shouldn’t want or need any more, something she should never have wanted or needed at all. She feels like she should be pushing this aside, like she should be trying to mend things with Xena instead, trying even if it proves futile to put things back the way they were, the way she still prays they will be again once they’ve left Britannia’s shadow behind them.

She doesn’t try to mend things, though, or try to put them back. She doesn’t pull away from Amarice’s arm, doesn’t let show any of the discomfort it brings out in her. All she does is walk.

It’s Xena who shatters the silence, maybe two or three hours later. “We’ll have to sell him,” she says, and it takes Gabrielle an embarrassingly long moment to realise she’s talking about the horse.

She knew it was coming, of course — it had to be, really —but still the words twist like a knife. Boadicea’s horse, her Aloysius… the poor thing has no idea that his master is dead, that he has no home any more. He’s trailing merrily behind them, as wordless and dutiful as Gabrielle is, albeit considerably happier about it. Gabrielle has to swallow down a sudden wash of emotion as she turns to look at him.

 _You deserve better,_ she thinks, and doesn’t quite know whether it’s for his sake or her own that she wants to cry.

“Can’t we…” she starts, knowing that it’s futile.

“No.” There’s a hint of Xena’s usual fondness to the word, like she’d anticipated this. “Gabrielle, we’re not taking a horse on a boat.”

Gabrielle sighs. She knew that would be the answer, just as she knows that it’s the right one — the horse belongs here in Britannia, not on the ocean or in Greece — but knowing it doesn’t lessen the sting. It just doesn’t seem fair; Aloysius has been loyal and obedient, to Boadicea and then to Gabrielle, and he deserves more than to be sold to the highest bidder just because he’s an orphan now.

“Are you sure?” she asks, probably a little too hopeful. “I mean, I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve—”

“ _Gabrielle_.” The name is a warning. “We are _not_ taking a _horse_ on a _boat_.”

There’s no arguing with that, Gabrielle can tell, not that she gets the chance even if she wanted to. Amarice, not exactly on speaking terms with Aloysius even at the best of times, is naturally thrilled by the idea of seeing him gone, and she leaps on Xena’s moodiness with an excited little bounce.

“Good,” she says. “That little bastard is nothing but trouble.”

“He’s a good horse,” Gabrielle says, falling back a step or two to hug his neck. “You just don’t know how to communicate with him.”

Xena rolls her eyes. It’s upsetting; normally she would at least indulge her a little, but now she doesn’t seem to care, and the moment’s almost-levity dies strangled at the look on her face.

“Good or not,” she says, “we’re not taking him with us. There’s a farming village a few leagues in that direction. We can find someone there to take him off our hands.”

Gabrielle really, really doesn’t want that. She knows that Xena’s right, but the loss is still a hard one to take after everything she’s been through here, and it doesn’t help at all that the poor horse doesn’t even realise what’s about to happen to him. It’s bad enough that he won’t ever see his real owner again, bad enough that he’ll live out the rest of his life never knowing that she’s dead, that by sending him halfway across Britannia with a pair of strangers she was trying to save him from the same fate. It’s bad enough that he’ll never know she cared enough to do that, but to be cast aside afterwards, sold like a bag of turnips to be forgotten tomorrow… that’s a sting that will last.

Still, what can she say? Xena is angry, clearly still hurting from whatever happened on the battlefield, and Gabrielle has learned from repeated experience that trying to talk her into anything when she’s in this kind of a mood will only ever end in pain. Xena has never taken kindly to defeat, even when it’s necessary, and maybe getting rid of the horse is her way of putting the whole affair behind her, selling off the last lingering memory of her not-quite-friend so that she can move on from it all. It’s always been so much easier for Xena to do that sort of thing.

Gabrielle knows how badly situations like this affect her, how hard she’s worked to harden herself against them, and how much that hard work costs sometimes. She’s seen some of the wars Xena has to fight inside herself after the big battles are over, after the blood has dried on the grass and the bodies are counted and burned; she knows how much it takes out of her, knows that every life she takes or loses drains a little more of her own. She’ll deny such a thing to her final breath, but Gabrielle has seen her in the quiet afterwards, and she knows better. Xena moves on very quickly, yes, but she does it because she has to, because it will eat her alive if she doesn’t. She is so afraid of letting that happened, so afraid of waking up to find that there is nothing left of her but the monster she once was.

Whatever she feels about this, however much a part of her might want to, Gabrielle will not take that away from her. Xena wants to get out of Britannia as quickly as she can, and after everything that’s happened here to both of them, Gabrielle can’t really blame her for that. She can’t argue against it either, and she wouldn’t even if she could. She’s made her journey, done what little she could to breathe a little life back into her soul; now it’s time to step up once again and be the balm for Xena’s.

“All right,” she says. She gives Aloysius a last lingering hug, then takes her place at Xena’s side. “If that’s what you want.”

Xena shakes her head.

“It’s not,” she says, and doesn’t look at her. “None of this was what I wanted.”

*

They travel slowly, and stop early.

“We’ll get there in the morning,” Xena says, without explanation.

She doesn’t ask for opinions, and neither Gabrielle nor Amarice is brave enough to offer one. Gabrielle is surprised — she’s learned time and time again that nothing can stop Xena travelling through the night, no matter how exhausted, if she’s that fixed on getting somewhere — but she knows better than to question it right now. She nods, Amarice shrugs, and that’s the end of the conversation.

It’s unexpectedly easy to slip back into old routines once they settle in. The sun is still up, sinking fast but with good enough visibility that it’s no challenge to gather firewood and make ready for the evening. It’s so, so easy, stepping back and becoming a shadow again, letting Xena set the pace and make all the decisions, doing what she’s told without having to think too hard or too much or at all. Gabrielle hates when Xena treats her like a kid, like she’s useless, but she didn’t realise how utterly exhausting it is, being the one who does all of those things, and all the more so when she’s fighting her own pain at the same time.

In any case, she’s grateful for the respite. She’s been doing her best to hide the physical discomfort, the soreness between her legs as she walks, but she knows Xena too well by now to expect that she’s had any measure of success with that. If she has any idea of the source, she blessedly keeps it to herself, but when she insists they stop for the night before the sun is even down, she doesn’t try to hide the fact that she’s staring straight at her. She won’t say anything about it in front of Amarice, Gabrielle knows, but her reasoning is as clear as glass.

There’s plenty of meat left over from earlier, so there’s no need to hunt for the evening meal. The sight of that stuff still turns Gabrielle’s stomach, but she doesn’t immediately turn it away because she can feel the way Xena’s staring at her. She’s never been particularly subtle about this sort of thing, and Gabrielle knows that she’s watching carefully for any sign of weakness, itching for something to jump on, to turn the focus away from her own struggle and back onto Gabrielle’s, the one thing she’s always been able to deal with.

Gabrielle can’t give her that. She would do almost anything in the world to make Xena’s burden lighter, but she won’t make her own heavier. Not here.

Amarice sits close by, favouring Gabrielle’s side of the fire but never touching her. She watches her too, but the look on her face is very different to Xena’s. It’s close to sadness but not quite the same, almost like a kind of longing. Gabrielle wonders if she’s going to miss this, that fleeting time when it was just the two of them, when they were the only two people in the world.

“Hey.” Gabrielle doesn’t touch her either, but somehow it’s easier to talk to her than it is to Xena just now. It shouldn’t be, but it is. “You okay?”

Amarice doesn’t even try to smile. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

Gabrielle doesn’t say, _‘I can take care of myself’_ this time. She’s said it so many times by now, it’s a miracle she’s not saying it in her sleep. “I’m all right.”

“You sure?” Amarice’s fingers flex a little at her sides; Gabrielle can tell that she wants to take her hand, that she’s holding off not for either of their benefit but for Xena’s. “You’re not really eating.”

Xena snorts, oblivious to the tremors in Amarice’s hands, or the one lodged in Gabrielle’s throat. “She’s stubborn like that.”

Gabrielle stiffens. It shouldn’t sound as cruel as it does, not from Xena. They always say things like this about each other, and she knows that it’s not meant in cruelty. It shouldn’t affect her at all, and it definitely shouldn’t make her angry, but something about the casual coolness makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck. _What would you know about it?_ , she thinks, and feels ashamed.

She can still feel the blood soaking her hands, wet and hot, and when she licks her lips she imagines the taste of it on her tongue. She still remembers, so vividly, the last time she was here watching some hapless creature bleed out all over her. She can hear Amarice’s voice echoing again in her head, the distinction between _‘what happened to you’_ and _‘what you did’_. The distance between those words shouldn’t feel so vast, but it is. It is such a huge difference. Why doesn’t Xena understand?

The thought makes her whole body churn, makes her throw her food onto the fire for fear of what she’ll do if she keeps holding it. She watches it blacken, wishing that it was as easy to burn away the memory of blood. She wants to thrust her hands into the flame as well, remind her body how it felt to be scorched from the inside out, remind it of how painful a fire really can be. She wants Xena to see how much the memory still hurts and she wants Amarice to see that it’s not about the deer, that it was never about the deer, or even really about killing.

“I’m not hungry,” she says.

Xena sighs. “Gabrielle…”

She means it as a warning, but Gabrielle is in no mood to be meek now. She is too raw, too afraid of exposing herself, and when she says Xena’s name in return it’s a warning too.

“Don’t.” Her voice breaks, though, and the warning dies with a whine. She’s never managed to sound as threatening as Xena does. “Xena, I don’t claim to understand what you went through on your battlefield. Please don’t think you understand what I went through on mine.”

“I do understand,” Xena says, very low. “I was there.”

Gabrielle swallows. This is so hard, so terribly hard.

“No,” she says, a whisper that carries. “You weren’t.”

She doesn’t know where the words came from, doesn’t even realise she’s still feeling that way until it’s out, until she can’t take it back and she realises in the same instant that she doesn’t want to. She’s not angry, at least not in any meaningful, productive way, but there is still a part of her that can’t let go, that can’t untangle itself from the girl she was last time, the girl she becomes all over again when she looks at Xena and sees the way Xena looks at her.

Xena’s not looking at her like that now, though. Gabrielle’s not sure what she expects, whether it’s that cloying compassion, the parts of her that see something in need of protection, or another wave of the anger and hatred that have been her constant companion ever since they came back here. She’s not sure which would be worse, but it doesn’t really matter, because her face shows no signs of either.

Instead, she looks like she’s been struck a blow, like somehow Gabrielle is the warrior and Xena the helpless young girl who doesn’t know any better, like every word out of Gabrielle’s mouth is some deeply buried fear uncovered and brought back to life. It’s enough to make Gabrielle feel guilty and ashamed, but still not enough to make her want to take it back. It might hurt, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. If Xena had been a little quicker, if she’d paid a little more attention, if she…

She’s on her feet without even realising she was moving, spinning on her heels and reeling when the world spins with her. All of a sudden, she has to get out of here. She has to put some distance between herself and Xena’s face.

“I’m going for a walk.” It comes out Xena-sharp, Xena-violent. The voice might be hers, but all she hears is Xena. “I need some fresh air.”

“There’s air here,” Amarice blurts out, before she can stop herself. “I mean, it’s not, like, super-fresh or anything, but…”

She trails off, looking terribly sad. She’s so desperate to turn this around, Gabrielle can tell, so unhappy about everything this reunion has become, but of course her pleas and her sorrow fall on deaf ears. It’s strange, Gabrielle thinks, how all of a sudden she’s the one storming off while the headstrong, violent Amazon-in-training is the one trying to keep the peace and that the warrior princess is the one not saying anything at all. Everything feels like it’s been turned upside-down, all their roles switched up and swapped, and she doesn’t like the way it makes her feel, loose and outside of her own control. This must be how Xena feels all the time.

“You know what I mean,” she snaps, ignoring the hurt look on Amarice’s face. “I need to clear my head.”

For about half a second, it looks like Amarice is going to reach for her. Her fingers spread out in the space between them, trembling and tentative, but she thinks better of it before she can make the contact and pulls back her hand as though it’s been burned.

“You sure?” she asks. “I could go with? You know, if you—”

“Leave her alone,” Xena says. She sounds rough, but not aggressive. Gabrielle can feel the heat of her eyes on her. “If she wants to go, let her go.”

“But I—”

“ _Amarice_.”

Gabrielle recognises that tone all too well, and the hidden meaning underneath; as soon as she’s gone, she knows they’ll be talking about her. No doubt Xena will interrogate Amarice, try to drag out all the darkest and most private moments they shared on this journey. No doubt Amarice will try to resist for a minute or two, mumbling something about respecting Gabrielle’s feelings and not wanting to go behind her back; that will last just as long as it takes Xena to break out her patented warrior princess’s glare, and then it’ll be all over. Amarice might not realise it yet, but Gabrielle does: her secrets are all but spilled already.

Well, let them spill. Let Xena drag whatever she wants out of her, if she thinks it will help her to understand. Gabrielle marvels at the calmness that spreads in her at the thought, a wash of something almost like relief where she expected to find bitterness and resentment. She feels like she should be angry, like she should feel a sense of betrayal, even violation to think that these two people — the two people who matter most to her in the world, the two people she _trusts_ more than anyone in the world — would talk about her like that, but she doesn’t feel that at all.

Honestly, it just feels easier this way, comforting that she doesn’t have to be there when her shame is spread out at Xena’s feet, when her pain and grief and suffering is brought to life again. She is so burned and brutalised by this place and what it did, so broken inside by the endless feeling of rawness and vulnerability, so utterly exhausted by all the feelings she knows should have defeated by now. She is so _tired_ and in so much _pain_ , and she can’t help thinking that this has to be better than having to say those awful words herself.

“It’s all right,” she says again, soft, with her eyes on Amarice.

What she really means, of course, is, _‘please, tell her everything’_.

*

She finds a peaceful, secluded spot some distance from their camp, and immediately starts pummelling the nearest tree.

The feeling that surges up in her is strange, something she’s never really felt before; it’s a clashing of rage and nausea, but a version of both those things that is wholly new and very strange. Gabrielle is no stranger to nausea, especially lately, but rage has never been much of a friend to her. It’s the rage that manifests physically, though, the rage that seethes in her stomach and clenches in her chest, and it’s the nausea that settles, inexpressible and wholly emotional, in a place where her body can’t reach, a place that doesn’t feel sick at all.

She doesn’t remember reaching for her sai, but she stops to catch her breath for a moment or two and there they are in her hands and the tree trunk is riddled with little holes. She doesn’t waste time wondering when that happened, when a few harmless punches turned into slash after slash with dangerous weapons; she doesn’t care. The sai feel natural in her hand, just like they always do, and the rhythm of the movement is strangely soothing as she surges forward to strike again and again and again.

This isn’t the sort of thing she usually does, lashing out at inanimate objects to make herself feel better. She’s never been the kind to take comfort in catharsis like Xena so often does, but there is so much whirling around inside her right now that she can’t process it without doing something, without making use of all that pent-up energy, without turning all that chaos and conflagration into something real, something that’s entirely _hers_.

The tree is an innocent in all of this, but it doesn’t seem to mind the assault. It doesn’t bend or break, and it doesn’t bleed when she wounds it.

She goes at it for a while, long enough to work up a sweat and feel the familiar burn of exertion in her muscles. She tries to keep a distance from the noise in her head, tries not to think too much about Xena and Amarice and what they might be saying about her, and she feels herself burn hotter when it doesn’t help.

Really, she supposes she shouldn’t have expected it to. She knew, even before she came out here, that it wasn’t really about that, or them, or this. Seeing Xena again, seeing the haunted, hateful look on her face, hearing the venom when she spoke about Boadicea and poison and weakness… it sparked too many memories inside her, too many things that she couldn’t fight off; making eye-contact with the woman she loves strikes as hard as a punch now, and that’s not the way it should be. It cuts so deep that Xena doesn’t understand, that even now, with all the time and distance in the world, she _still_ doesn’t understand.

Gabrielle doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel about that. There was a reason she chose Amarice to take this journey with her, and a bigger reason why she chose to exclude Xena, but she’s supposed to have learned something out here. She’s supposed to have _become_ something, and it hurts so, so much to reunite with Xena now and watch all of that learning and being and doing slip through her fingers as though it never existed at all. She should have known that it would happen that way, should have realised that the sight of Xena would affect her like this, just as she should have known that it would rend her down to the soul when she plunged her knife into a dead deer and saw the blood spill out onto her hands.

This place hurts. Everything she sees or does or thinks dredges up old memories she thought she’d buried or, far worse, ones she thought she’d accepted and dealt with. Going back to Dahak’s temple was supposed to be a revelation, a way of facing everything that happened there and putting it all behind her at last. It was supposed to leave her healed and whole, not sore and angry and vulnerable. It was supposed to fix everything. Instead, it left her soul festering like her shoulder did on the voyage out here.

Gabrielle hates that. She hates now, just as she hated on the boat, that she can’t force her wounds to heal just by saying that they will. She hates that things aren’t better, that she wasn’t strong enough or good enough to make them better. She hates that going back to the temple only sharpened the hurts and resurrected ones she’d thought were dead. Boadicea told her that facing her past would help her to make peace with it, but all it ever did was scrape her raw.

It shouldn’t surprise her, she supposes, the feeling laced with bitterness. If Xena is right, if Boadicea really is weak and worthless, if she really is a coward, why should she expect her suggestions to hold water?

The thought makes her angry again, sharpens the strange rage-nausea inside of her until it’s almost unbearable. Boadicea was a warrior, a leader, and a hero. She was one of the most formidable, strongest, _greatest_ women that Gabrielle has ever met. If someone like her can be called weak for taking her life in her own hands, what does that make a shivering little wreck like Gabrielle?

It shouldn’t matter, she knows, what Xena thinks of Boadicea. That’s between the two of them and the bad blood that never truly dried between them. She doesn’t want to care what Xena thinks about her old friend-turned-enemy-turned ally, but she does care what Xena thinks of _her_. She has worked so hard, fought for so long to make herself strong and brave and wise; she has done everything she possibly could to be worthy of sharing Xena’s life and her heart. She has tried again and again and again to make Xena see her, to make her recognise the power hidden inside the young girl who followed her home. She has done everything to make Xena see into her heart the way she sees into hers. After all that, maybe it’s time she accepted that Xena was right all along, that maybe she was never truly strong at all.

The idea lingers, a stain spreading across her mind, washing out her her movements and drowning every part of her, making her clumsy and stupid, her performance worse and worse and worse until she misses the tree entirely, until she finds herself less than a step away from the gods-forsaken thing, a thousand times taller and wider and bigger than her, and realises she can’t hit it.

This time, at least, it’s not horror or grief or pain that makes her scream. It’s pure, simple frustration. The result is the same, a razed-raw pain in her throat, but at least this time she’s the one in control of what she’s feeling.

Naturally, Xena chooses exactly that moment to step out from the brush.

Gabrielle doesn’t turn around. She’s flushing fire-hot now, but she doesn’t care. She won’t give Xena a chance to chide her, or to feel sorry for her.

“How long were you hiding back there?” she mutters, more to herself than to Xena. The question comes out husky, rough with humiliation and the lingering heat of exertion. “An hour? A decade?”

Xena snorts. She’s amused, but it’s guarded. “Somewhere between the two.”

“Right. And you couldn’t have picked a more flattering moment to show yourself?”

“And miss the look on your face?” She tries to chuckle, but it’s heavy, and the air around them transforms into something weighted. “Gabrielle, I—”

“—talked to Amarice,” Gabrielle finishes. She still doesn’t turn to look at her. “I suppose she told you everything?”

“I’m sure she thinks she did,” Xena says, not without kindness.

Gabrielle shakes her head, then shoves her sai back into her boots before she can embarrass herself any more than she already has. There are so many things she wants to say, so many incomplete and half-finished thoughts spinning around in her head, but she has no idea where to even begin. She doesn’t even really know what she’s feeling, whether it’s anger or shame or guilt, whether the sick feeling in her heart is grief or pain or something deeper, whether the flush that tickles her neck when she looks at Xena comes from love or somewhere a bit darker.

She doesn’t know what she wants to say, but she does know that the one thing she _doesn’t_ want to say, the one thing she has no reason to say is the one thing she does.

“Xena, I’m sorry.”

She claps a hand over her mouth almost before the words are out, and she’s not sure whether she regrets it because it’s not true or because it is.

Xena frowns at her for a long moment. There’s an odd look on her face that tells Gabrielle this was the last thing she expected to hear. Given the way she stormed out during the evening meal, Gabrielle supposes she can’t blame her for being a little thrown. She doesn’t really know where the apology came from herself, after all, so why in the world should she expect Xena to?

“Sorry?” Xena echoes after a moment, a frown creasing her forehead. “By the gods, what for?”

“I don’t know.” She blurts it out like a prayer, hoarse and tearful. “I don’t know, Xena. Everything. Nothing. I don’t…”

She shakes her head, lets the words trail off. She wishes that she could shake all the thoughts and all the feelings out of herself, expose them and transform them into something that Xena can see and hear and understand, maybe even something she herself can understand too. She wishes that she could reach down into the part of her that is a bard, or that _was_ a bard, and turn pain into poetry like she used to. When did it become so hard for her to do that? When did it become such a struggle to find the words that have always come so easily to her? They’re supposed to be the one thing that never fails her.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks, but she still can’t say it. _I’m sorry I brought you here. I’m sorry I hid my pain on the boat and I’m sorry I hid it again after we got here here. I’m sorry I left you to fight your battle all alone and I’m sorry I couldn’t let you be at my side when I fought mine. We’re supposed to be together for eternity. We’re supposed to be everything, you and me, and I’m sorry I took that away without even asking._

“No,” Xena whispers, and the light in her eyes makes Gabrielle wonder if she heard all of that, if she looked into her heart and her soul like she does so easily and read the words she’ll never say or write. “No apologies, Gabrielle. Not here. Not any more.”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to say _‘thank you’_ , but what comes out is “Xena, I’m just like her.”

She doesn’t know where that confession comes from, but it makes the air bend and break between them. One look at Xena’s face tells her she doesn’t need to say the name, and when she echoes it out loud it’s with heartache in her voice.

“Boadicea.”

Gabrielle nods. “You say she’s weak for taking her own life before Rome could take it from her. You say she’s weak for choosing poison before torture, but I would have done the same thing.”

Xena shakes her head. She looks angry, driven to rage by the mention of Boadicea, but there’s a part of her too that seems almost frightened. It’s so rare that she lets that show through, even in a private moment like this.

“Don’t talk about it,” she says, heated. “We’re not talking about it.”

“I would have.” Gabrielle ignores her. She won’t let Xena turn away from this. If she really does believe she’s weak, she’ll have to say it to her face. “After Solan, after Hope, after _you_ … I nearly did.”

Xena turns away. Her shoulders are shaking. “I know you did.”

It’s not exactly a revelation, though Gabrielle rather wishes it was. She remembers quite clearly that Xena was there at the time, that she saw if not the whole moment at least some part of it. She remembers looking up, finding her face in the dark in the moment she poured out what was left of the poison, in the moment she gave up what she wanted because she was too afraid. She remembers not really knowing what she felt, certain as she was that if she’d realised Xena was there just a second earlier she would never have poured it out at all. The sight of her, she knows, would have brought out the courage she needed to see the thing through. Even now, so many years later and after so much healing and growing and learning, she still doesn’t really know how she feels about that. Even now there are days when she wonders if she should have.

“I would have,” she whispers.

“I know,” Xena says again. “I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

“I know.” It’s an empty, worthless echo. “Xena, it wasn’t… it wasn’t weakness that made me want it. It was weakness that made me stop.”

“Don’t.” Xena’s eyes are closed now and she’s breathing very heavily. “Gabrielle, don’t you dare talk about it like that. Don’t you—”

“But it’s the truth.” She tries to swallow, but there’s nothing in her throat. “Xena, I wanted so badly to just… not feel anything any more. I thought I could… I thought if I… I thought…”

“Gabrielle.” She sounds wracked, tormented. “It doesn’t matter, all right? It’s in the past. It’s behind us now. It doesn’t matter any more.”

“I know.” The words sound hollow, endlessly repeated like that, but they’re true just the same. “It’s not really about that. I wish it was. I think it might be easier.” She sighs, and Xena echoes the sound, soft and full of empathy. “Being here again… I still hurt inside, but it’s different. It’s changed. I…”

“ _You’ve_ changed,” Xena finishes for her, and the softness is so painful.

Gabrielle nods, wills herself to push aside her thoughts of poison, of Hope and Solan and wishing she had the courage to die. “I’m not a kid,” she says. The confession cuts deep. “I’m not a little girl any more, Xena…”

“I know you’re not,” Xena says. Gabrielle can tell that she’s thinking of what happened before all of this, of Mavican and Ares and Gabrielle’s own quiet pride, of Xena promising to try and see her. “I do see you, Gabrielle. I _know_ you.”

“You don’t understand.” Admitting out loud is like the moment after a desperate rush of adrenaline, the bone-deep exhaustion that floods the body when it does. She leans against the tree and breathes deeply. “I’m not a little girl _now_ , Xena, but I _was_. The last time we were here… I was. I was so naïve, Xena, and so _young_. I believed everything they told me, _everything_ , and I…” It’s such a challenge not to choke on the words, the truth, the pain. “I needed you. I needed you, and you weren’t there.”

Xena closes her eyes, sighs very deeply. “No,” she says, devastatingly quiet. “I wasn’t.”

“I am strong,” Gabrielle whispers. She doesn’t care any more if she can convince Xena. All she wants right now is to convince herself. “Back here, now, I’m stronger than I ever thought I would be. But I wasn’t back then. I was weak and small and… and _helpless_.” She’s never really admitted that out loud before; it strips her to the soul. “You were supposed to protect me. You promised you’d keep me safe. But you didn’t. And then, when it was over, you let me think it was my fault.”

“I did _not_.” Xena’s eyes are impossibly bright, and then a heartbeat later impossibly dark. “Gabrielle, I would _never_ …”

“Not on purpose.” It hurts so much, just thinking about it; Gabrielle can hardly believe how much. “After I… after what happened in that temple, I was… I felt…”

“I know,” Xena says. “I was there for _that_.”

Gabrielle nods. She wants to throw herself into Xena’s arms, wholly and completely, but she also wants to throw herself in the opposite direction, to turn around and run away from this, from her, from everything she’s thinking and feeling and remembering. Her palms are slick with sweat, but when she clenches her fists it feels like blood, wet and hot between her fingers. _What happened to you,_ she thinks, and wraps the words around herself.

“I thought…” She chokes on the word, and has to take a moment before trying again. “I thought I’d done the most terrible thing in the world. I thought I _was_ the most terrible thing in the world. And you… Xena, you never once told me that it was _them_ , not _me_. You never once told me that I wasn’t responsible for what happened in there. You never… all those times I cried in your arms, all those horrible nightmares, all those times I said _‘I killed her’_ … and you never once said _‘they made you do it’_.”

“Would you have believed me?” Xena asks. “If I had said that?”

 _Of course not,_ Gabrielle thinks.

“I don’t know,” she says out loud. “I guess I never will.” She swallows, wills herself to get through this. _This is what it is to be strong,_ she tells herself, and trembles under the weight of it. “For so long, I believed that it was all my fault, that I was being punished for what I’d done to Meridian. I blamed myself for _so long_ and you… Xena, you let me do that. Because you… because you…”

“Because I didn’t want you to see that it was _my_ fault,” Xena confesses, breathless and every bit as broken as Gabrielle. “Because I couldn’t bear to see that light go out of you when you realised _I_ was the one to blame for it. Because I didn’t want you to stop looking at me the way you did back then.

“That’s not going to happen,” Gabrielle whispers. “Not ever.”

“I know that now,” Xena says. “But _then_ …” She sighs, shakes her head. “Gabrielle, all of this…”

“I know.” She wants to cry. She wants so badly to be weak. “I know. It’s in the past, right? It’s in the past, so it doesn’t matter.”

Xena sighs. “It matters,” she says. “If it matters to you, it matters. It’s just… we never really got a chance to talk about it. You were in so much pain, so wracked with guilt. I thought that was what you wanted. I thought you were just working through what had happened in your own way, And then I looked away for a second, just a second, and you were pregnant. And then Hope was born, and…”

“…and then it really didn’t matter.” The words are a gasp, almost a realisation. It’s as true for her as it is for Xena. “Suddenly it was all about her. Suddenly it was… it…”

Xena shakes her head, sorrow stained by the agony of regret. “I had no idea,” she says softly. “If I’d’ve known that you were still carrying all this around, don’t you think I would have said something?”

It’s a fair point. But then, of course, how could she have known Gabrielle is the one carrying it around and even she didn’t really realise it until she was on her way back here, until she was standing on the deck of a ship that wouldn’t stop pitching, nursing a wound that wouldn’t stop festering, telling herself again and again and again that she was strong, that she was brave, that she had to be more than the girl she used to be. How could Xena possibly have known that this place still haunted her when she didn’t even know it herself?

“I’m sorry,” she says out loud.

“No.” Xena takes a few steps forward. She leaves a little space between them, perhaps a body’s worth, but she’s so close now that Gabrielle could throw herself into her arms if she wanted. She does want, but she doesn’t do it. “No apologies, remember? Not from you.” She sighs. “By the gods, I wish you would’ve let me go with you. I wish you would’ve let me try to make up for not being there back then. Damn Boadicea to her poison if that’s what she wants. Gabrielle, my place is with _you_.”

“No.” For once, it sounds stronger coming from her than it did from Xena. “No, your place is where you’re needed. It was better that way, Xena, believe me. Amarice…”

“Amarice.” The name is a sigh, weighted in a way that she never gets when she says Gabrielle’s. “She’s a good kid. And I’m glad she was there. But that’s not…”

“No, it’s not.” Gabrielle shifts a little, feeling the lingering soreness between her thighs, and masks a grimace. “She understands, Xena. She knows what it’s not.”

“Does she?” It’s just a question, nothing more. Xena has never been the kind to get jealous, and she’d certainly never allow it in a place as painful as this. _‘You do whatever you have to do,’_ she’s told her countless times. “Have you seen the way she looks at you?”

“She was surprised,” Gabrielle says. “I don’t think she really understood what happened here or how much pain it caused.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Xena says. There’s genuine fondness in her voice, for both of them. “I didn’t. You didn’t. How in the world could she?”

Gabrielle bites her lip. “She was surprised,” she says again. “And I think she feels sorry for me.”

“It’s hard not to.” She’s smiling as she says it, though. It’s warm and genuine, and it makes Gabrielle feel something almost familiar, almost _them_. “Look, Gabrielle. Amarice was here, I wasn’t. It’s none of my business, whatever she could give you that I couldn’t. You know I understand that. But if you think it’s _pity_ she’s feeling when she looks at you like that… if you think it’s _surprise_ …” She shakes her head, aching and tender. “Gabrielle, it’s so hard to spend time with you and not want to spend more. It’s so hard to do anything with you and not want to do everything with you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” The smile shifts, turns almost sad, and when she touches Gabrielle’s face there’s something strangely like a tremor in her fingertips. “You’ve never seen that light inside you. You’re so obsessed with becoming stronger or better or _more_ that you’ve never noticed the effect you already have on everyone who touches you.”

Gabrielle doesn’t understand what she means, but she feels herself flushing just the same. “It’s not like that, Xena.”

Xena breathes out, and her hand slips from her face. Her fingertips aren’t shaking any more, but they’re very warm when they find the place on Gabrielle’s shoulder where the wound is healing and healthy. Her other hand drifts down lower still, thumb at her waist and palm covering her hip.

It’s good, it’s comfortable, but there’s a part of Gabrielle that wants to pull away, that still feels the shadows of this place chilling her on the inside. She doesn’t, though, because she doesn’t want Xena to think that she’s rejecting her. After everything, so many half-moments and half-memories and things that neither one of them can take back or undo, she can’t bear the thought of turning Xena aside now. She’s not entirely sure she wants this moment to be more than it already is, but she doesn’t want Xena to think she doesn’t want _her_.

Xena leans in, presses a kiss to her forehead, then to her temples, and then she pulls away. Gabrielle feels her breath catch, suspended in her chest, and even though she knows what will come next, she doesn’t pull away like she wants to.

“It’s not like that,” she whispers again.

“Of course it’s not,” Xena says.

Gabrielle doesn’t say anything. Xena’s lips don’t give her the chance.

*


	15. Chapter 15

*

They spend the night, all three of them, in separate bedrolls.

It’s been a very long time since that happened, since Gabrielle found herself sleeping completely alone. Before they came back to Britannia, she would spend almost every night curled up with Xena, limbs tangled and bodies pressed in close against each other, warm and comfortable; she never feels quite so safe or so loved as she does when Xena’s breathing catches the rhythm of her own. It’s been that way between them for so long now that she’d all but taken it for granted.

That all stopped when they began the journey back here, though. Xena became angry and detached so quickly, and Gabrielle remembers entirely too well that first tension-stained night, the way she wanted to crawl into her arms like she always did, to find her home in there, a sanctuary to hide from her troubled thoughts. She remembers, too, just as well, the moment Xena rolled over and told her to go back to sleep.

Everything changed after that. Over the course of this long, awful journey, somehow Gabrielle has become the one with open arms, the one letting her breathing catch in rhythm with someone else’s. Suddenly Amarice was the one seeking her arms as a haven haven, crawling into her bedroll and curling up against her, falling asleep to the rhythm of her heartbeat. It’s new, and a little strange, but it’s still very, very different from solitude. No-one has ever looked to her for protection before; no-one has ever seen in her the things she sees in Xena, something warm and safe, a protector instead of someone who needs protecting. Xena holds her like she thinks she’s something precious, something fragile; Amarice curls up against her like _she’s_ the one who feels fragile, like Gabrielle is the one who keeps her strong.

They’re near-perfect opposites, Xena and Amarice, but with neither of them close at hand right now Gabrielle finds that she misses them both equally.

She doesn’t sleep particularly well, but she does sleep, which is more than she expected. She drifts in and out of dull, hazy dreams, jolting herself awake only to find that she barely remembers them at all. More than once she finds herself reaching, grasping and groping at the empty blanket or the cold grass, seeking Xena’s powerful arms or Amarice’s tickling curls, only to find that there’s nothing, no-one there. It’s deep, the sense of emptiness that fills her, the feeling of being lonely even when she’s so far from alone.

It’s perhaps an hour or two before dawn, just as she’s hovering on the edge of another restless dream, when a voice in her ear cuts through the haze and wakes her.

“Hey, Gab?”

Gabrielle resists the urge to pull the blanket over her head. She’s very tired, but the loneliness is stronger than the sleepiness, and it makes her throw back the covers and squint up.

“Amarice?”

“Hey!” She’s whispering, and that sets Gabrielle’s mind a little at ease. If it was serious, she would have woken Xena first, and not nearly so quietly. “You awake?”

“Uh…”

“What am I saying? Of course you’re awake. Uh… unless you’re not…” She blinks a few times, eyes flashing in the dark. “Are you talking in your sleep again?”

Gabrielle chuckles. She keeping her voice low as well. “I’m awake.”

“Oh, good!” She shakes herself a little, as though realising that this might not be a good thing. “Or, uh, sorry, I guess? I know you need your sleep and stuff. It’s just… I wanted to show you something.”

Gabrielle frowns. She’s not entirely sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Knowing Amarice, though, perhaps it should have been.

“Something that couldn’t wait until morning?” she asks, with more amusement than annoyance.

Even spoken lightly, she knows that it’s a stupid question. Amarice’s face doesn’t fall, at least not exactly, but Gabrielle can tell that she was hoping for a different reaction, for eagerness and excitement. Personally, Gabrielle can’t imagine anyone feeling that way in the should-be-sleeping hours of the morning, but the look on Amarice’s face says that she does.

Gabrielle feels a surge of tenderness at the sight of her like that. She wants to touch her face, tell her that she’s not the problem, that it’s the strangeness of the hour, but she knows it would be a waste of energy. Better to keep quiet and play along; no doubt she’ll find out for herself what’s so important.

“Gotta be now,” Amarice says, still soft but a little uneasy now. “I mean, like… kinda ‘now or never’, you know?” She looks very nervous. Gabrielle wonders whether it’s because she can’t do this in daylight, or because she knows she’ll never find the courage to ask again. “Is that okay? I mean, if it’s not, that’s… uh, it’s not, like, important or anything. It’s just… uh…”

Gabrielle throws back the blanket, exposing herself to the chilly night air. It reminds her of when they lay together back at the temple, silent and cold and reverent. She remembers the stars, so many of them all spread out like a blanket over her head: she remembers the sheltering shadow of the stones, remembers Amarice’s hands all over her, remembers the pain and the comfort that they brought. It makes her feel hot and cold at the same time, chilled on the outside but warmed inside her skin. She’s too far from the fire to feel its heat but her body seems to think it does anyway. She’s flushed, and Amarice’s eyes are as star-bright now as they were back then.

 _Oh,_ she thinks.

Amarice shuffles her feet. She’s flushed too, and uncomfortable. “You know, uh, never mind. I should… uh, I’m just gonna go and uh… get back to… uh…”

Gabrielle stops her. She doesn’t know why.

“It’s all right,” she says. “Show me.”

*

Amarice leads her into a quiet clearing, a short distance from their camp.

It’s a beautiful spot. That much is obvious, and Gabrielle doesn’t really need the eager hopefulness in Amarice’s eye to tell her that she’s supposed to be awestruck. They’re surrounded by trees on all sides, secluded and sheltered under the rich night sky For once, it’s mostly cloudless, a few shadows here and there but nothing more than that, and there’s something almost dizzying in the sight of it all, the stars scattered like freckles across the endless indigo. It’s familiar. It’s so, so…

“Pretty, huh?”

Amarice’s whole face is lit up, not from the stars but from something else, not a reflection of the world around them but a kind of beauty that comes from inside, something all her own. Gabrielle can’t help herself; she looks right into her eyes, blocks out the world around them, the stars in the sky so hollow next to the ones she finds a little closer to the ground.

“Yes,” she whispers.

She doesn’t need to ask why they’re here, why Amarice brought her to this place at this time, with the stars so high and Xena sleeping back at camp. The intention is written all over her face, and Gabrielle doesn’t need to look up and find the familiar sky to know that the mirror is intentional. She closes her eyes, lets her body go loose, a kind of acceptance, even invitation, without words.

By now there’s nothing new in the way Amarice pulls her in, the way she kisses her and cups her neck. They’ve done this dozens of times in the days since they first left Boadicea’s camp, and it’s second nature to welcome it again here and now, to find comfort and compassion in the press of her lips, to welcome the warmth of her hands, her body. None of that is new at all, but there is something vastly different in the way she does it this time, the way she kisses her not with tenderness or an ache to heal but with a kind of desperation, like this is their last night on Earth, like the whole world will break apart in a minute or an hour, like _this_ is how Amarice wants to die.

She’s breathless when she pulls away, eyelashes wet and tickling Gabrielle’s cheek, and Gabrielle wants nothing than to hold her close and say _‘I’m sorry’_.

She doesn’t, but Amarice responds as though she did. “I know,” she says, soft even here in the privacy of this place. “I know it’s not… I know it never was…” She shakes her head. “I know, Gabrielle. I know.”

Gabrielle remembers talking to Xena, remembers the the look on her face. _“Have you seen the way she looks at you?”_ she asked, and Gabrielle thought that she had. Amarice has looked at her in a lot of different ways since this started, moved and horrified and warm and sad, so many feelings all blurring together in the space between wet lips and wet lashes, but she has never, ever looked at her like this.

“Amarice.” Her voice cracks; she’s never said her name quite like this either. She thinks back to the first time they kissed, clings to that moment and the words they chose. “It’s an Amazon thing. You and me… we’re…” She licks her lips. Amarice is so close that Gabrielle’s tongue finds her cheekbone instead. “You are so much like Ephiny.”

“Nuh uh.” Amarice turns her head just slightly. She catches Gabrielle’s tongue in her mouth for a second, then lets it go. “ _You’re_ like her.”

Gabrielle knows that’s not true. She could no more be like Ephiny than she could be like Xena. They’re both so far beyond her, so much greater than she could ever dream of being.

“Amarice…” she says again but the rest of the sentence dies unspoken, choked off by a sudden wave of longing.

She doesn’t know where it comes from. Her feelings for Amarice have always been very simple, something distant and separate from the things they’ve done together on this journey, the way they kiss and touch and hold each other, the way _Amarice_ holds _her_ in the moments when the memories crash over her, when her strength is gone and the weakness turns her limbs to water. She’s always known what this is, what they are. She has always understood what _‘it’s an Amazon thing’_ means, and what it doesn’t.

“Yeah.” Amarice’s eyes are bright, but no longer with starlight. She understands too, Gabrielle knows, and wonders why she never saw how much it must have hurt. “I get it. You know I get it. It’s you and Xena, it’s always gonna be you and Xena. I’m always gonna be the annoying tag-along. It’s what it is, and that’s okay. Not gonna change it, and I dunno if I even really want to. I like what we are, you know? I like _us_. I like that we’re not messy or… or…”

“I like that too,” Gabrielle says, a little too quickly. “I like you.”

“Well, duh. I’m likeable.” She tries to grin, but she can’t quite manage it. Gabrielle touches the corner of her lips, feels them tremble. “But I… Gabrielle, I don’t…” Her breath is so shaky. “I don’t want _that_ to be how you remember it.”

Gabrielle frowns. She doesn’t want to make this hard, but she’s not sure she understands. “I’m sorry?”

“You know.” She takes a step back, searching for any signs of insincerity. It is so, so important that she be taken seriously. Gabrielle catches her hands, lets her know that she is. “ _That_. You and me and that place. I know why we… I know why you wanted it the way you did. I get it. I mean, I don’t really ‘get it’ get it, but I get it. You get it?”

Gabrielle blinks helplessly. Honestly, she has no idea who gets what. “Uh… sure?”

It’s good enough, apparently. Amarice rushes on, breathing hard. “It’s just… I don’t want the only time to be… to be _that_. You know what I mean? I know it’s not… I know _we’re_ not. But I don’t want you to remember being with me as something that hurt.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle’s heart clenches, a spasm that feels like it might split her ribs. “Oh, Amarice. Oh.”

“I know. It’s stupid. But it matters. To me, anyway. It matters.”

Gabrielle understands that. She does. But the distance between what she remembers and what Amarice does is so vast, so wide. “You know it wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah, it was.” She looks so vulnerable, so breathtakingly exposed. “I know you don’t… I know you don’t really think of it like that. But it was. You _hurt_. You were in the place that hurt you, and you were hurting, and I… I…”

“You didn’t,” Gabrielle tells her, though she knows that it won’t help. She thinks she understands what Amarice is feeling, but she doesn’t know how to make her see that the truth is very different. “It hurt, yes. But it was _my_ pain. It was me and you, and it was…” She shakes her head; even now, so much later, she can’t find the words. “Amarice, being with you turned the hurt into something that didn’t.”

Amarice sighs. “I know that,” she says. Gabrielle wonders if that’s true. She looks so young now, so hopeful and frightened at the same time, like a girl standing in front of her first crush. “I just… I want to be with you when there is no hurt. Just one time. Not… not like an Amazon thing or a healing thing or… or any kind of ‘thing’. I just… I want you to remember being with me and feeling _good_. Nothing else. Just good.”

Gabrielle aches, so deep that she knows it will always be a part of her. It won’t change anything, she knows. They’ll either lie together here like Amarice wants or they won’t, but either way it won’t matter. They’ll go back to camp, back to their separate bedrolls on different sides of the fire, and they will never touch each other like this again. Whatever Amarice might feel for or about her, whatever Gabrielle might have felt too in a different time of her life, it doesn’t matter. This can’t be more than what it is: a moment, fleeting and healing and theirs. Selfishly, Gabrielle thinks that that’s enough.

Amarice might not feel that way, but she would never admit it. She is so young, so wild in everything she does, and she is too proud to commit to anything that might hurt. There is so much of Gabrielle in the way she leads with her heart, and so much of Xena in the way she sees the world. She has so much still to learn about both those things, her heart and the world that would break it, and Gabrielle can’t bear to stand in the way of that. She’s a little older than Amarice, yes, but she’s still young as well, still growing and learning in her own way. They are too much alike, so innocent in all the wrong ways, and so experienced in things that hurt. They both need Xena, not each other.

Still, even as she thinks of turning her away, of saying _‘you don’t need to do this’_ , Gabrielle finds that a part of her wants it too. Amarice has been so much for her, and she has given away so much of herself to something she knows that she will never be a part of. She has kissed her and held her; she has loved her in every way, as an Amazon loves another, just as Ephiny loved them both, and she deserves — they both deserve — to know how that love feels when it’s not attached to pain. Just once, just briefly, they both deserve to know.

She doesn’t say _‘you don’t need to do this’_. She doesn’t turn her away. She just takes her by the hand, pulls her in, and lets her kisses speak for both of them.

Amarice’s mouth falls open under Gabrielle’s, aching and awestruck and just a little surprised. “Please…” she whimpers, and Gabrielle hears in it an echo of her own voice, breathless and strangled under stars just like these.

“Anything,” she promises, and knows that Amarice understands.

They stay like that for a long, long time, just kissing. Gabrielle isn’t sure how they end up on the ground, but when she opens her eyes there they are, dry leaves and wet grass sticking to their skin and clothes. Amarice clings to her, holding on with a kind of desperate strength, flushed and feverish, gasping into her mouth and then down along her throat, and Gabrielle can’t do anything but cling back, feeling her muscles weaken, feeling her bones turn brittle, feeling herself surrender.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks. _You deserve more, you deserve better, you deserve—_

“Gabrielle…”

Her name sounds so different on Amarice’s lips, so unlike the way it sounds on Xena’s. Xena is always in control when they do this; she makes every decision even when Gabrielle is the one who instigates. Amarice is tentative, almost fearful, as inexperienced in this as Gabrielle herself was before Xena taught her better. Neither one of them really knows how to lead in something like this, and though Gabrielle is well acquainted with what makes her body feel good, she realises now that she’s never really needed to put it into words.

Xena knows her pleasure, as intimately as she knows her own. Amarice only knows her pain.

Neither of them wants that now. Gabrielle wants _this_ , hands and mouths and skin. She wants the leaves under her back, the grass catching in her hair, the stars above her head; there are no stones here, no scorched earth or bad memories, nothing that hurts at all. There is only this, the two of them tangled in each other, and that is exactly what Gabrielle wants. She wants what she has, what _they_ have, not an eternity but a moment, here and now and this and—

“ _You_ ,” she gasps, and the want fills her chest like air, like breathing.

Amarice buries her face in the crook of her neck, choking on something that might be a sob. Her mouth is open, wet against the skin, a wordless whimper that says so much.

Gabrielle pulls her head up, fingers twisting in her hair. It’s dishevelled, damp from the grass and with leaves clinging to the curls, but it frames her face in a way that rends Gabrielle’s heart in two. She’s flushed, panting, and her mouth is still open. Gabrielle leans up and captures it with her own, pulling Amarice’s body over hers, letting the skin and leather cover her completely.

It’s Amarice who breaks the kiss this time, pulling away with shaking limbs. Her eyes are devastatingly bright, and Gabrielle can see how wet they are, how wide and dark and starry. She wants to do more than just kiss her now; she wants to take away the parts of her that feel things she shouldn’t, the parts of both of them that want more from this than they’ll ever have.

 _You,_ she thinks again. _Oh, Amarice, I wish…_

“Don’t…” Amarice blurts out, and for a moment Gabrielle wonders if she heard the thought. “Gabrielle, don’t ever…”

“I won’t,” Gabrielle says roughly. “I promise.”

“Never again.” The word echoes, _again_ , filling in the blank space in Gabrielle’s head. She thinks of crosses, of blood and death and Rome, of an angry young woman left alone to mourn. “Never…”

“Shh.” Gabrielle takes her hips in her hands, draws their bodies together. She can feel the heat rising up between them, can feel Amarice trembling under her touch. She can’t take away the things that have happened to either of them, but she can make this moment matter more. “I’m here. _We’re_ here.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s barely a whisper. “I’m sorry… I’m not…”

“You are,” Gabrielle says. She doesn’t care what Amarice is trying to say. It’s not important. “You are, you are, you are.”

Amarice falls forward, chest heaving when it presses against Gabrielle’s, and touches her shaking lips to the place on her shoulder where the wound once festered. “I wish I was. I wish…”

“Shh,” Gabrielle says again, and lets the words end.

It’s easy enough to silence her with hands still on her hips, with her own jutting up to meet them, encouraging far more than inviting. A quick tug, a wash of kisses to her jaw, her throat, her collarbones, and Amarice starts moving on her own. She’s eager, easily lit up, and it doesn’t take much to distract her from the darker things. Gabrielle, who has more than her fair share of experience with unwanted thoughts in moments of intimacy, knows all the tricks to quieting them, and she uses that talent well. She angles her hips, lifts, and lets Amarice’s body do the rest.

 _This is enough,_ she thinks, and prays that’s true for them both.

What follows is slow, more sweet than sensual. Amarice is so shy, so thoughtful; breathless and wanting as she is, still she asks for permission before she does anything or touches her anywhere, so afraid of doing the wrong thing, terrified that Gabrielle will break if she does. Her fingertips are unsteady; they tremble wherever they touch, and when she gazes down at her with kiss-bruised lips and blown pupils Gabrielle recognises in them a plea for help. She is so frightened of hurting her again.

She flinches when Gabrielle guides her hand between her legs. It’s a kind of full-body shudder, not the kind that comes with pleasure but the kind that comes with dread, and when her fingers find her slick and ready they seize and freeze.

“I can’t,” she whimpers. Her eyes are impossibly wide, and she presses her face to Gabrielle’s neck to hide it. She wasn’t expecting to react like this, Gabrielle realises. “I can’t, I _can’t_ …”

The meaning is obvious. _I can’t go inside you,_ she’s saying. _Not again. Not after that. Please, please don’t make me do that again._

Gabrielle understands, of course; she’s been there herself. Xena never really sees the panic in her, the split-second of terror when she asks for _harder_ and _rougher_ and _stronger_. It doesn’t last very long, but it’s always there, a moment or two every time when she thinks, _I can’t do this_.

Gabrielle is more than ready this time; Amarice wouldn’t hurt her, no more than Gabrielle has ever really hurt Xena, but still the fear is there, lingering and cripping. Gabrielle, unlike Xena, knows exactly what it feels like.

“You don’t have to,” she says. She runs her thumb along Amarice’s wrist, rests against the pulse for a moment or two, then moves up to cover her fingers. “It’s all right.”

She shows Amarice what to do, as gentle as she can be when her body is spread open like this. She wants more, but she understands in a way that Xena never truly does that what she wants is more than her partner is capable of. This is about the two of them, as much about what Amarice is able to give as it is about what Gabrielle wants to take, and she lets Amarice hold back as much as she needs. It doesn’t matter. It’s still good. It’s still really, really good. It’s…

It’s _enough_. The pressure, the friction, the way Amarice touches her, the way she reacts to Gabrielle’s responses, the way she finds a rhythm and holds it and holds _her_ , the way she does all of this because she wants to, because it means so much to her. It’s _enough_ , all of it, and Gabrielle surges upright when her climax hits, burying her face in wet, tangled curls, not to silence herself but to bring Amarice close, to make sure she hears it when she chokes out her name.

Amarice keeps stroking her even after she’s done, long and lingering, like she doesn’t want to let her go, like she never wants this to end. Gabrielle guides her away when she grows too sensitive, leaning back to look her in the eye, to remind them both that they are here, that this happened, that it happened without any pain at all.

There’s a sort of awe on Amarice’s face when she takes her hand back, when she sees the wetness glistening on her fingers, when she lifts them to her mouth and tastes. She looks like someone who has never done this before, who never thought such a thing would happen to her, and Gabrielle feels a pang of something soul-deep when she looks at her, reverence and tenderness, a flicker of guilt and regret and… and, yes, _love_. Tempered, and vastly different from the kind she feels when she lies with Xena, but it is real and it is true.

Gabrielle catches her breath, finds Amarice’s hips with her hands. “Let me…”

Amarice shakes her head, stops her before she can try. “It’s not about that,” she says softly. “It was never about that.”

The ache in her voice is painful, but she doesn’t let it touch her face. She smiles, no doubt because she knows that Gabrielle needs to see it, and leans in to kiss her one last time. It’s deep and slow, fingers loose and languid where she cups her neck, thumbing the spot just below where her hair is cropped. Gabrielle closes her eyes at the contact happens, more breathless from this than from her climax. She could drown here, in her, in a moment that isn’t about being hurt or haunted or healed, a moment that is so simple, so sweet, so much closer to innocence than she’s been in so many years.

Sometimes Gabrielle forgets how young she was, and how little time has passed since then. It wasn’t so long ago that she had no idea what true pain was or what peace could be found in pleasure; it certainly wasn’t so long ago that she would have blushed at the thought of seeking solace in something like this. Being with Xena has changed her so much; it’s made her hard, sharpened her experiences and her pain to a keen edge. She didn’t think she would ever be with someone as young and soft as she herself used to be, as she’ll never be again. She didn’t think she’d remember how it felt, being innocent and not afraid.

“It was,” she says, when they break apart. She touches Amarice’s face, finds a different kind of wetness there. “It _was_ about that, Amarice. You, just you. Not Xena, not… Amarice, _you_ …” She kisses her again, light and chaste this time, a brush across her damp cheek. “It had to be you.”

Amarice pulls away. Shadows pass over her face as she stands, but the starlight catches the mark left behind by Gabrielle’s lips.

“Nah,” she says. Gabrielle has never heard so much want or so much regret in one word. “It should have been Ephiny.”

*

By the time they get back to camp, Xena is awake and waiting for them.

She’s hunched over the fire, poking at it with a stick, body whipcord-tight as though bracing for an attack. She doesn’t turn around when they approach, but there’s no mistaking the subtle slump of her shoulders when she hears them approach. It’s so typical of her, Gabrielle thinks, a little annoyed and a little sad; she must know that they weren’t in any danger, but still she’s tensed and poised, ready for a fight in the half-second before they get within earshot, as though a part of her wishes that they were. She does this sort of thing all the time, weighing up the chances of trouble even when her instincts tell her there is none, and it’s only when the truth is proven beyond all shadow of doubt that she lets herself relax.

It’s sweet, but kind of tragic at the same time. Gabrielle has often wondered if Xena can even remember a time in her life when she wasn’t calculating the likelihood of someone dying.

“Took your time,” she murmurs when they get back.

The smile in her voice is obvious, and when she finally does turn around it’s there on her face as well, the relief of knowing they’re safe mingled with the fact that she clearly knows exactly where they were and what they were doing. Gabrielle returns the smile, a little self-conscious but not ashamed of herself. She has no reason to be; at this point in their relationship, it wouldn’t surprise her if Xena had been the one to plant the idea in Amarice’s head in the first place, a gentle suggestion during the brief time they were alone. _‘You owe yourselves some closure,’_ she would have said, because that’s one thing she does understand.

“Amarice wanted to show me something,” Gabrielle says, unabashed.

Xena snorts, but her expression gives nothing away. “Of course she did.”

Amarice is, naturally, rather more embarrassed. She’s blushing furiously and staring down at her boots like she wishes they would spontaneously combust and take her with them. Gabrielle has to swallow a laugh at the sight of her; even if it wasn’t Xena’s suggestion, it’s hard to believe that anyone who has travelled with Xena for this long would be so naïve as to think that she wouldn’t know every little detail.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, scuffing the dirt with her toes. “I… uh… that is…”

She doesn’t quite seem able to finish the thought, much to Gabrielle’s relief. Knowing her, she would either conjure up an excuse so thoroughly infeasible that she’d just make them both look like idiots, or else get flustered and blurt out the whole sordid story. Frankly, Gabrielle could do without either, and when Amarice just trails off and shakes her head she can’t quite mask the sigh of blessed relief.

Xena doesn’t say anything to either of them for a while. She studies Amarice long and hard, features illuminated by the campfire and utterly inscrutable. The firelight is very strong, and it makes her look strong too, more so even than she usually does; the lines and curves of her face stand out, light and shadow making them seem sharper, edges tightening across her cheekbones, her jawline, her mouth. She is so beautiful, and that thought so soon after what she’s just done makes Gabrielle feel guilty and cruel.

After a long moment, looking Amarice straight in the eye, Xena says, “Thank you.”

Amarice lets out a loud, nervous gulp, clearly taken aback. Of all the possible responses she was expecting, it’s not hard to guess that this was not on the list. “For what?” she squeaks.

“Everything,” Xena answers. It sounds like an echo, a moment or a memory made manifest, haunting and healing at the same time. “All the things I couldn’t do.”

Suddenly, Gabrielle is the one blushing, the one looking at the ground and feeling awful. She feels caught, suspended like she was the last time she came here, not above an altar but between the two of them, Xena who she loves so much and Amarice who… who was there for her when Xena wasn’t, when Xena couldn’t be, who did so much when Gabrielle couldn’t even lift her head, when Xena herself was so angry, so obsessed, when neither one of them could break away from the past.

“I didn’t do anything,” Amarice is saying, a low, modest mumble. Xena doesn’t need Gabrielle to tell her that’s not true. “I just… I was just…”

“You were there,” Gabrielle tells her. She can’t look at Xena right now, but looking at Amarice hurts just as much. “You were everything.”

“I was?” There’s a kind of breathlessness in her now, not the reverence of earlier but something just as delicate. Gabrielle has spent so much of the last few days feeling fragile and broken, she’s almost forgotten what those things look like on someone else. “I mean, uh… you know, you asked me to go with you, so I did. We do that kind of stuff all the time.”

 _Not like this,_ Gabrielle thinks. Out loud, she just says, “I guess we do.”

Amarice nods, then clears her throat. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter any more,” she says. “It’s finished now, isn’t it? You and that place, Xena and Bodacious…”

“Boadicea.”

“Uh huh. All that stuff. All the stuff that hurts. It’s finished now, and we… we can go home. Go back to the way things should be. Right?”

They all know it’s not that simple, but neither Xena nor Gabrielle is cruel enough to shatter that kind of hope. One of them, at least, should leave this place innocent.

“Right,” Xena says. Her voice is heavy but the smile lingers, as strong as the rest of her. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“Good.” Amarice is blushing again but it’s different, and when she turns to look Xena in the eye it’s with a ferocity that Gabrielle has never seen in her before. It’s not her usual Amazon pride, or her warrior’s bloodlust, the parts of her that are always hungry for a battle or the chance to prove herself. It’s just as intense as all those things, yet somehow far more powerful.

“You take care of her,” she says to Xena. “Now that you’re back and she’s back and you got each other back. Now everything’s back, you know, the… the way it should be.” She doesn’t even try to keep her voice from breaking. “You gotta take care of her now.”

Xena looks to Gabrielle. Her smile softens for a moment, then flares sunlight-bright, drowning even the fire.

“She can take care of herself,” she says.

*

They break camp before dawn, not because they’re in any particular hurry, but because all three of them are awake anyway.

Xena takes the lead, as usual — she knows how to navigate in the dark, and she knows their destination — and Amarice sticks like a limpet to her side. They don’t really talk, but Gabrielle understands just the same the need to slip back into the familiarity they had before all this. Xena doesn’t care one way or another, she knows, but for Amarice the clinginess is a symbol of something else, a simpler time when Xena was the famed warrior princess and she was just a young Amazon who wanted to be a warrior too, when Gabrielle was a disappointment of a queen. If there’s something deeper hidden underneath that, a sense of loss when she glances back and sees how much _‘the way it should be’_ really costs, she’s careful not to let it show.

Gabrielle, for her part, keeps a short, safe distance from both of them. She does it for their sakes, of course, not wanting to force her presence on either one of them, but she does it for herself as well, perhaps even more. She’s tired, unfocused in that familiar way she feels sometimes when she hasn’t had enough sleep, and she’s not sure how she feels about leaving this place again so soon. She doesn’t know if she’s truly come to terms with everything that happened here, or if she ever will, and it makes her feel strange and cold inside to know that she won’t get a chance to try again. This is _it_ , and if it’s not enough that’s just too bad.

She’ll probably never be truly ready to leave here, but at the same time she’s still not truly ready to be here at all. She feels like she’ll forever be trapped in a kind of emotional limbo, never quite able to climb beyond what happened, all the myriad conflicting things it still makes her feel. There’s so much she hasn’t worked through, so much she thinks she probably never will, and it’s so hard to think about all that, to feel the weight of it bearing down on her, and not feel like she’s failed in what she tried to do here. She should be looking ahead of her now, seeing another long sea voyage on the horizon, her home waiting on the other side. She should be ready to leave her experiences here to the past, but she’s not.

She doesn’t want Xena to know that, though, and she definitely doesn’t want Amarice to know it. She came here to heal, and she managed it as well as she possibly could; she doesn’t want them to know that it wasn’t enough, that nothing any one of them could have done would have ever been enough. She definitely doesn’t want them to know that _enough_ might never come, that this is a pain she might end up taking with her to her grave.

Her next grave, anyway. Though that’s assuming it’s more permanent than the last.

Strange, she thinks, how living through death hurts less sometimes than living through life. She can still feel the pain of the nails sometimes, can still remember trying not to scream when they went in and through. Xena was so broken, in more ways than just the damage to her spine, and Gabrielle couldn’t endure the thought of forcing her pain onto her as well. She clenched her teeth when it hit, almost bit through her tongue in the effort to keep from screaming, but she did it. She held the pain inside, let the nails come and go through her, and she didn’t cry out even once. She’d screamed her throat raw when Alti showed her, brought the pain to life there inside her, but when the moment finally came to live through it, when it was there and _real_ , suddenly she was so calm.

It hurt to die, but it was nothing like the way this hurts. The faded scars on her hands and feet show her where that hurt is, show her what happened to cause it. They stand as testament to what she and Xena went through, what they survived together. Stark and white, they paint a vivid, vibrant picture, detail a unique sort of suffering, the kind that no-one else has lived to tell about. It’s clean, easy to explain and understand, and it’s not like this at all. This pain still tears through her, but there are no scars, no faded white marks to show the place where the hurt went in.

 _“It hurts inside,”_ she said to Xena, and yes, it still does. Inside, hidden where no-one else will ever find it, it does. Not even Xena with all her talents for healing, can see deep enough to mend that.

Gabrielle closes her eyes, wills herself to think beyond those feelings, to focusing on their destination, a town that looms on the horizon like a shadow and the business they have there.

“I don’t want to sell you,” she says to Aloysius. It’s true; the horse is loyal and surprisingly fast for one so old, and he hasn’t complained once. Just like Amarice, he’s given so much more of himself than she ever had a right to ask for. “You’re a good boy, and it’s not your fault your owner is…”

But she cuts herself off before she can say _‘dead’_. He might not understand what she’s saying, but it still feels needlessly cruel to say it to his face.

“…well,” she amends after a moment. “It’s not your fault. None of it is. And I… you know, I’d keep you if I could. You and Argo could be good friends. You deserve a good friend.” The thought makes her choke a little, and she doesn’t want to admit how much of a struggle it is to regain her composure. “But Xena won’t let me. And I guess… I guess she’s right. Maybe. I mean, Britannia’s your home, isn’t it? You belong here, and I…” She swallows hard. She doesn’t expect the realisation to punch her in the gut, but it does. “I don’t.”

It takes her a moment to recover from that, forehead pressed briefly against the horse’s strong, corded neck as she tries to catch herself, to remember that a place isn’t the same as a memory, that a part of her will always be stuck on Britannia even as the rest of her knows that it shouldn’t, that she really doesn’t belong here.

“It’ll be okay,” she says, when she can breathe again. “I promise. We’ll both be happier where we’re going.”

*

It’s mid-morning by the time they reach the town.

For a little nowhere place on the edge of Roman control, it’s surprising how well it seems to be thriving, and Gabrielle is thrown by how friendly the people are. That’s definitely not been her experience with the people of Britannia thus far… Boadicea notwithstanding, of course, and she has a sneaking suspicion that was just because she’d invited them. It’s not strictly the island’s fault, she knows — being held by the throat by Roman invasion after Roman invasion would make anyone moody — but still the civility surprises her.

“I guess Rome hasn’t found its way here yet, huh?” Amarice says to Xena, seemingly as puzzled by Gabrielle by the pleasant atmosphere.

“Looks that way,” Xena says. The words are even, but her jaw is very white.

Amarice studies her for a moment, then shrugs and moves on. Gabrielle doesn’t, though; she’s never been able to ignore the shadows when they pass across Xena’s face, and she can feel the conflict pouring off her now, defeat mixing with guilt to form something very powerful and very unpleasant. It takes a moment to find her own inner strength, but once she has it, it’s no effort at all to pour it out into Xena, to try and wash away just a little of that rising awfulness.

“Hey.” She moves in, touches her shoulder. “You okay?”

She doesn’t really expect an answer, but it still smarts just a little bit when Xena doesn’t even glance at her.

“Come on,” she mutters, hollow and sober. “Let’s go sell that gods-forsaken horse of yours.”

 _He’s not mine,_ Gabrielle thinks. _If he was, I wouldn’t let you sell him._

She doesn’t say that, of course. She doesn’t know why this bothers her as much as it does, and in any case she doesn’t want to rub salt into Xena’s wounds.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why she’s feeling this way, to know that she will blame herself for whatever happens to this town and these people when Rome digs its claws in. Gabrielle has never been as clever as Xena when it comes to the art of war, but it doesn’t take a military genius to figure out that Boadicea and her army were probably the only real resistance in this part of the island. What happens next… well, Gabrielle knows that it’s not on Xena’s conscience, that the loss was inevitable no matter what she did, but that won’t stop her shouldering the guilt.

They’ll have to talk about this, Gabrielle decides. She has learned the hard way not to let wounds from Britannia fester longer than they need to. For now, though, she just does as she’s told. This isn’t the time or the place for talking, not when she’s still feeling sore about the horse and Xena is so uncommunicative. It’s best for everyone just to focus in on the task at hand, tragic as it is to sell a steed so loyal.

Xena asks around in the local tavern. To no-one’s surprise, she’s an old hand at this sort of thing, long accustomed to hawking the spoils of war to unsuspecting drunks, and even if she wanted to help Gabrielle isn’t sure she could; she still feels a pang in her chest every time she looks at Aloysius, every time she thinks of leaving him here to die for a Roman’s breakfast. She doesn’t want any part in this, but it’s not a fight she can win, so she sits herself down at the bar and tries not to think too much about it.

Xena picks out a couple of farmhands in a quiet corner, and talks to them in low tones. A farm would be quite nice, Gabrielle supposes, though it doesn’t make the prospect of saying goodbye sit any less unpleasantly inside of her. Still, it’s a sweet thought, a nice quiet spot for an old horse to live out his days without ever having to worry himself about Romans or temples or anything else.

“You look like you’re burying your best friend or something,” Amarice gripes, dropping herself down next to her.

Gabrielle opens her mouth to argue, then changes her mind. “Not this time.”

Amarice rolls her eyes. “Gods. If you’re gonna be all mopey and dramatic, can you at least buy me a drink?”

It’s not exactly subtle, and Gabrielle rather suspects that’s the real reason she’s joined her here. Less sympathy, more liquor. It’s a pleasant shift from so many feelings and painful intimacies; for a moment, it feels almost like nothing ever happened between them, like they’re back to the way they used to be, the headstrong young Amazon and the soft-spoken bard, quietly clashing and always pushing each other in all the wrong ways.

Gabrielle does buy her a drink, if only because she appreciates the normalcy of it. “Try not to drink it too fast,” she says, then grimaces because of course Amarice is already halfway down the mug.

“Uh huh,” she grunts, not even pretending that she heard. “Look, I dunno what you’re all bent out of shape about. It’s a freaking horse. It’s not even a person.”

“Don’t call him _‘it’,_ ” Gabrielle snaps, sharper than she intended. “He has feelings.”

“He’s a _horse_. And you’ve barely known him for five minutes.”

Gabrielle scowls. “Sometimes that’s all you need,” she says.

It’s an odd feeling, and she doesn’t really understand it. She still can’t figure out why this is so important to her, why she feels so stubborn and upset about it; it’s hardly the first stray beast they’ve picked up on their travels, and far from the first time Xena’s ordered her to abandon one. This sort of thing used to happen all the time back in their early days together, and Gabrielle flatters herself that she’s grown beyond the green young thing who was so easily enamoured by everything that crossed her path.

Still, it sits wrong. She doesn’t know how she’s going to say goodbye to the stupid old horse who came so far with them. She doesn’t know why she cares, either, but she does. She really, really does.

“Whatever,” Amarice is grumbling. “ _I’m_ glad we’re seeing the back of him.”

She lets it lie there, but Gabrielle catches a hint of regret behind her eyes, like she realises she’s being unjustly unkind. That’s fair enough; Gabrielle knows that the same is true of herself.

They both soften after a moment or two, in almost perfect unison, and Gabrielle feels a familiar kick in her chest when the backs of Amarice’s fingers brush her arm, a momentary contact that can’t be anything but deliberate as she lifts the mug back up to her lips. It’s subtle, or as subtle as she’s capable of being, and Gabrielle is thankful for it. She relishes the new kind of intimacy between them now, the wordless whisper of _‘we’re still okay’_ that neither of them needs to say.

It’s a while before Xena comes back to them, and when she does the deal is already done. She takes the farmhands outside after a very short talk, and returns with a sober look on her face and a coin purse hanging heavy from her belt.

Maybe she thinks it’ll be easier for Gabrielle to not have to say goodbye to her new friend, or maybe she just doesn’t want to give her a chance; they all know that Gabrielle’s wide eyes are Xena’s one weakness, and it wouldn’t be the first time her conscience ruined Xena’s good — or bad — intentions. Of course, it’s just as likely that she didn’t want Amarice getting in the way, opening her big mouth and ruining her chance of a good deal. There are many possibilities, not all of them personal, but still Gabrielle finds it hard not to take it that way.

She opens her mouth, when Xena sits down beside her, to ask if they’re finished, but what comes out is “You could have let me say goodbye.”

Xena quirks a brow, caught between confusion and annoyance. The former is common in moments like this; the latter definitely is not.

“You had plenty of time to say goodbye,” she says, more than a little sharp. “You and that horse have been inseparable all morning. You want me to give you a few months to learn his language and say it again?”

“Of course not.” Gabrielle can feel herself flushing. Amarice’s fingers go tense against her arm, twitching, as though she can sense the conflict rising up again. “But that’s not the point, Xena. He was—”

“He was a _horse_.”

“Argo’s a horse.”

Xena pinches the bridge of her nose, strained, like she’s fighting off a headache. “Gabrielle…”

“He was a good horse,” Gabrielle presses. Not for the first time, she finds herself wondering if amybe this doesn’t actually have anything to do with the horse at all. “He was loyal. He was obedient. He was _good_.”

“And he’ll have a _good_ life,” Xena shoots back. In a flash, the tiredness is gone and in its place is a vicious, spiteful anger. “That’s more than can be said for the dozens of men and women I had to watch be slaughtered or taken off as slaves or poison themselves. They were all _good_ , Gabrielle, and not one of them will ever see the kind of life that horse will. Not _one_. So believe it or not, I think you’ll survive without a damned goodbye.”

Gabrielle, for the first time in a very, very long time, has no words.

Amarice squeezes her arm, just briefly, then lets go and reaches for Xena. “Don’t think she meant it like that,” she says, very softly.

“No, I didn’t.” Gabrielle swallows. Her mouth is very sour. “Xena, I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

“I know you didn’t.” Her voice doesn’t change though. “It’s all right, Gabrielle.”

It doesn’t really sound like it is, though. She doesn’t sound like Xena at all, at least not the version of her that Gabrielle imagines she knows. She sounds dark, destructive, like she’s giving in to something ugly and cruel inside of her, and Gabrielle doesn’t know whether she wants to wrap her up in her arms, shelter her from that side of herself, or else run away and hide, knowing as she does that she’s the one who made it worse.

She doesn’t get a chance to do either. Xena is glaring at Amarice, expression blank again, as though the outburst never happened at all, and she rushes on before anyone can stop her.

“Finish your drink,” she says. “I’m going to stock up on supplies, then we’re headed for the docks.”

She doesn’t say, _‘whether you like it or not’_ , but the implication is right there, and it settles like a rock in Gabrielle’s stomach. For a moment, she’s not sure why; she’s made her journey, made what little peace she can with it and stitched together what tattered threads of closure she might have found here. It’s not much but it’ll have to be enough. There’s nothing left for her, and she knows it… and it strikes her hard to look up and realise that it isn’t her own pain that’s weighing down on her this time.

The look on Xena’s face as she sweeps past them is terrible to behold. It’s still there, the violence she’s been carrying on her back ever since they arrived, but it’s changed somehow, become something else. She lashes out so easily now, even after a tender moment, and while there’s a part of Gabrielle that admits she probably hasn’t been as tactful as she should have, even her most tactless moments have never brought this out in her before. Xena has always been sweet with her, has always dug deep into her reserves of tenderness even when to all the world she seems empty. No matter what happens, she has always looked to Gabrielle as her light and her warmth, as her _hope_.

She’s not doing that now, though. She’s been changed by this place as well, Gabrielle realises, and wonders for the first time how lucky she must have been to have left the camp when she did. Her journey might have pulled her apart, rent her asunder and left her with a new mosaic of scars, but she’s not nearly so haunted now as she was before. Xena, on the other hand, is almost the opposite.

It’s strange, seeing her like this. Her struggles might not be so brutal as Gabrielle’s, her scars not so ugly nor so deep, but they are there; she’s just better at hiding them. Gabrielle finds herself struck by that thought, frightened by what she sees when Xena turns away from them, when she brushes past without a word or a glance, when she says _“we’re headed for the docks,”_ and leaves no room for discussion, as though Gabrielle and Amarice are nothing more than bodies.

“Xena.” She tries to catch her by the arm, but Xena shrugs her off and keeps right on going. “Xena, _wait_.”

“No.” It’s not a reply, Gabrielle can tell. It’s an answer to all the questions she never got to ask. “There’s nothing else for us here.”

“But… but what about the people who live here?” The question surprises her far more than Xena; it’s the only one she can think of, the only thing she knows will pull her away and make her look at her. “You’re just going to leave them? Let them fall to Rome?”

“They’ve already fallen, Gabrielle.” She doesn’t really sound defeated, though. She just sounds angry and bitter. “Boadicea would never admit it, even at the end, but she knew. She knew it from the start. You don’t take poison… you don’t even _think_ about taking poison unless you _know_ there’s no other way out.”

Gabrielle feels the truth of that very deeply. The words strike like ice through the marrow of her bones, and she almost chokes. She thinks again of Hope, dead or so she thought, drinking deep of a poisoned waterskin. She thinks of herself, taking that skin into her own hands, taking a moment as she lifted it, taking a breath and knowing, _knowing_ , right down to her soul, that she didn’t want to take another. 

“No,” she hears herself murmur, a confession that runs so much deeper than this moment. “No, you don’t do that.”

Xena studies her for a long, long moment, then puts a hand on her shoulder. There’s no compassion in the contact, no apology for dredging up old memories and no attempt to balm them now that they’re back on the surface. She’s not touching Gabrielle to comfort her; she’s doing it for her own sake, using her presence to ground her again, like she has so many times before.

She hasn’t done this for a while. Xena hasn’t really looked at her for more than a moment at a time, and Gabrielle was starting to think that she wouldn’t, that they wouldn’t be able to meet each other’s eye until they were back in Greece, until Britannia disappeared back into memory. She thought it would be days, weeks before Xena touched her like this again, before she let herself look at Gabrielle and need her, but here she is. Almost wordless, and with so much conflict still simmering between them, but here she is, touching her again like she does when she’s in her darkest places, like she does when she needs her light and her hope, after her worst moments and her heaviest losses.

Gabrielle knows that this one must be very heavy indeed; her hand weighs like an anchor on them both.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Xena whispers, very low. “I’m glad you’re still here. But _this_ … Gabrielle, it’s over. It has to be over. I can’t defend this place any more. I _can’t_.”

That’s not what she really means, Gabrielle can tell. Even now, even after everything they’ve been through, all the distance and separation, she still knows Xena better than anyone else in the world, and she hears the words between the words as clearly as if she’d shouted them. What she really means is _‘I can’t lose any more battles here’_. What she really means is _‘I can’t see any more pain here’_. What she really means, selfish for the first time in as long as Gabrielle has known her, is _‘I want to go home’_.

Gabrielle doesn’t know if she agrees with that. She definitely doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to do right now. But she does understand.

The battle is lost. Britannia is lost. Gabrielle has lost, too, so much of herself at the mercy of this place and the things it once did to her. Everywhere she looks, everywhere she turns, there is someone or something that is lost. Why should Xena lose what little is left of herself here as well? Hasn’t this island taken enough?

“All right,” she says at last, breathlessly soft. “If that’s what you want. To the docks.”

Xena kisses her forehead, relief tangled around regret, neither one of them as whole as she wants them to be.

“To the docks,” she echoes. “And then home.”

*


	16. Chapter 16

*

The docks are a good few leagues away.

Gabrielle has come to expect that kind of distance by now; no matter where they are or where they’re going, it seems like everywhere is a good few leagues away on this gods-forsaken island. As small as it looks on a map, still once she’s there it has the feel of something much bigger. It’s so full, swarming with strange people and strange secrets, Gabrielle thinks that she could get lost in the journey from one town to the next. They’ve only been here a few days, but it feels feels like she’s crossed half the known world in that time. What’s a few more hours now that the end is finally in sight?

Besides, whatever her personal feelings about Britannia, she’s not exactly enthralled by the idea of getting on another ship. The bad weather has been following them around ever since they left Greece, and if her luck thus far is anything to go by she doubts that will change any time soon. Britannia has left her so drained; she’s exhausted so much time and strength fighting so many things here, she’s not sure she has enough left in her to fight the sea as well.

Xena must be thinking the same thing, because she stops them in their tracks as soon as the coast appears on the horizon. Eager as she has been to leave Britannia behind, there’s only one possible explanation for the way she digs her heels in and insists that they stop to get something to eat.

She doesn’t say it straight, of course, but then she doesn’t need to. The way she’s staring, eyes locked on Gabrielle’s stomach with as much accusation as sympathy, says it all for her. 

Gabrielle rolls her eyes. “I’m not an invalid, you know.”

“Not _yet_ ,” Amarice chimes in with a smug little grin.

Xena glares at them both. “Stop complaining.” She nudges Amarice out of the way, then fixes Gabrielle with a steady, chiding look. “If you think for a second I’m letting you anywhere near the sea with an empty stomach…”

There’s a tender look on her face as she says it, gentle and teasing and very warm, and though Gabrielle knows that it comes at her expense somehow she finds that she doesn’t really mind. For a moment or two, they can both pretend that this is the most pressing problem they’ll ever have to face. No dark memories, no death or pain or grief, just a queasy bard and the warrior princess who thinks she knows what’s best for her. It’s a pleasant thought, even if that Gabrielle’s stomach disapproves of being made a martyr for it.

Xena seems to be in a much better mood now that she can see the sea, though Gabrielle has seen her like this too many times to expect it to last. Xena isn’t prone to mood swings, at least not the usual kind, but Gabrielle knows that she’ll be battling with what happened here for a long time. A smile means a great deal more on her face than someone else’s, but it’s still a mask, a cover for other things, and it’s definitely not an ending.

Still, Gabrielle relishes the moment while it’s there. Too many tragedies in too short a time have taught her the value of enjoying a little peace, however fleeting.

There’s still some venison left, the remains of Gabrielle’s less-than-clean kill. Amarice passes it around between them, and her fingertips linger over Gabrielle’s knuckles when she hands over her share. It’s deliberate, and she doesn’t even try to be subtle about it, but Gabrielle can’t quite tell whether she intends it as comfort or encouragement.

“You gonna be okay to eat this?” she asks, keeping her voice down, as though there’s any pitch low enough that Xena won’t overhear.

 _No,_ Gabrielle thinks, but she doesn’t want to sound pessimistic, and so she says nothing at all.

Xena frowns, eyes darting from Amarice’s face to Gabrielle’s, more amused than confused.

“By the gods,” she groans. “Don’t tell me you’re going through that _‘food is friends’_ phase again…”

“No.” Gabrielle licks her lips, swallows as her stomach turns. She’s going to have to get used to that feeling, she supposes. “I killed it myself.”

“I see.” She does, Gabrielle can tell; the look on her face says that for once she really does see everything. “That’d explain why your face turns to curdled milk every time you look at it.” She sighs, softens a little. “Is this about the violence thing?”

Gabrielle shakes her head again. “No. I chose my path. I know what it means.”

“Mm. You’ve taken pretty well to those things.” She cocks her head at the sai in Gabrielle’s boots, as though noticing them for the very first time, then takes a large bite of her meal. Gabrielle closes her eyes, and hears Xena sigh again. “So what’s the problem, then? Being here?”

“I guess so.” Her heart is hammering in her chest. She doesn’t know why it’s suddenly so frightening to talk about it. It wasn’t this hard when it was just her and Amarice, but now that Xena’s back it feels like confessing something shameful. “I’m sorry. I know I should be better. I mean, I _am_ better. I think…”

Amarice touches her hand. Gabrielle knows it’s her, even with her eyes closed, because the callouses are so small and light. “You are.”

“Maybe.” She takes a breath, opens her eyes to find Xena’s. “It’s just… I remember it so clearly. I still see her blood on my hands. I still feel like I’m up there hanging over that altar and being torn apart. I still… I still…”

She shakes her head; that’s not the only part of her that’s shaking. Xena doesn’t reach for her, but when she says her name, “ _Gabrielle_ ,” so low and tender, it feels like a balm.

“It’s okay,” Amarice adds, though she has to know this isn’t about her.

“I still go back there,” Gabrielle continues, eyes locked on Xena. “Even before I… even before I _really_ went back there. I still… do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Xena’s eyes are very dark all of a sudden. They do that sometimes, change colour even when there’s no change in the light. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But going back there… Gabrielle, it was always going to bring those things back to the surface. I don’t know why you thought it would drive them back down. I don’t know why you thought it would—”

She trails off, but Gabrielle hears the word she bites down. “— _fix_ me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Xena says, a little too sharp and much too quick. “There’s no miracle cure for this sort of thing, Gabrielle. You can’t just go back to a place and expect that to make it all go away. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t make yourself heal by saying that you will.”

“I _know_ that.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s no judgement in the question, not like Gabrielle expects; she could easily bring up her shoulder again, the wound that healed so slowly and festered so badly because Gabrielle kept insisting that it would heal by itself. She could, and it’s certainly not beyond her, but she doesn’t. Gabrielle wonders if she’s been through something like this herself, if she has little tear-smudged spots on the maps in her head, places she tried to revisit years later only to be broken all over again. She wonders how much Xena truly does understand.

“I…” There is so much she wants to say, and so much she wants to ask. “Xena…”

“Gabrielle.” Her voice is low, her face so full of love. “These things take time.”

“I know that,” Gabrielle says, softer this time. Her fingers clench around the meat in her hand; she wishes she could eat it. “Xena, you and I… we died. They hung us on a cross, put nails through our hands and feet, and left us there to die. And we did. We bled to death, hanging there in agony. We died, and then after we were dead we walked through Hell. We walked through _Hell_ , Xena, and we came back, and you lost yourself all over again and…” She shakes her head, lost. “We’ve been through so much so recently, and I… Xena, I don’t understand why none of _that_ hurts as much as _this_.”

Xena sighs. “Oh, Gabrielle…”

“Why?” she asks, hating herself for letting this out, for finally proving beyond all doubt that Xena was right all along, that she really is weak and small and worthless. “Why does it hurt so much? Why does it _still_ hurt so much? _Why_?”

“Why does anything hurt the way it does?” Xena replies. “Gods, I wish I knew.”

“So do I.” Gabrielle groans and tosses the meat away. “I can’t eat this. I’m sorry.”

Xena shakes her head, understanding in a way she hasn’t been in a long, long time. It’s a far cry from the anger that’s been boiling up to the surface ever since they set sail for Britannia.

She’s so much like her old self, like the version of herself she was before they came here the first time, before this island ever meant anything to either one of them. She’s the over-protective Xena, the Xena who cares maybe a little too much, and for the first time in what feels like months, Gabrielle welcomes her.

“I’ll go find you something else,” she’s saying, already on her feet before Gabrielle can stop her. “Can’t say I’ll miss much about this place, but they grow some great berries.”

Gabrielle wouldn’t know, but she nods anyway. “Good or bad,” she shrugs. “Either way, it’ll all end up in the sea.”

Xena snorts. “That’s what I love about you,” she says. “You’re such an optimist.”

*

Loathe as Gabrielle is to admit it, the berries are pretty great.

Xena gathers up about a million of them, countless different kinds in countless different colours, and Gabrielle eats heartily and happily. She doesn’t realise just how hungry she is until she’s got a few down, then all of a sudden it’s a challenge to try and stop.

Even after she’s full and comfortable, unpleasantly aware of the looming sea voyage, still she keeps throwing the little coloured things into her mouth, comforted by the rhythm as much as the taste. She’s content to eat as they walk along, something that Xena appreciates quite vocally; even if she wasn’t so eager to get back home, she’s never had much patience for Gabrielle’s slow eating.

It’s pretty late by the time they reach the docks. There’s still some light, but not very much, and less by the minute; if they don’t catch a ship within an hour or so, they probably won’t get one until morning. The thought of that, mixed with the sight of white-crested waves and bobbing boats thoroughly mutes Gabrielle’s appetite, and the last swallow turns into more of a gulp. She hands what’s left of the berries back to Xena, and tries to breathe through her nose.

Xena doesn’t comment, but she gives Gabrielle’s arm a brief squeeze before she saunters off in search of a captain.

Predictably, finding passage isn’t easy. Gabrielle has a dim, hazy memory of going through a similar struggle the last time they were here, though she wasn’t really in any condition to pay attention. She remembers Xena struggling to find a ship headed as far south as Greece, then getting frustrated when Gabrielle’s unexpected pregnancy forced them to stick around longer than she’d planned. It’s no less of a struggle this time, or so it seems, but Gabrielle has learned by now the subtle art of staying out of the way. Xena might not know the area much better than she herself does, but she’s an expert at getting people to do what she wants.

She’s not ashamed to use that talent to its fullest effect here, driven on by her own desire to set sail and get going. She smiles and threatens by turns, and when neither of those things work she whips out the coin purse she got from selling Aloysius and resorts to bribery. Gabrielle didn’t think a horse sold for very much, but apparently Xena can make the jangling of coin sound much heavier than it really is because after that it’s not very long at all before a money-hungry captain agrees to an out-of-the-way detour.

It’s not a cargo ship this time, but a small trading vessel. It’s cramped, overloaded with people and merchandise but at least this one was built with passengers in mind, which is more than can be said for the last one they were stuck on. Though she doubts it will make much difference to her own personal comfort — or lack thereof — Gabrielle is grateful for the promise of something other than damp crates to sit on.

They board within the hour, and set sail almost immediately. Gabrielle barely has the time to look around and take in the environment before she feels the familiar tug of motion underneath her feet and watches the dock start to drift. That’s all it takes, a quick tug and a splash, and it’s done and they’re on their way home and she’s standing there with her arms limp at her side, wondering how in the world it all happened.

Britannia is falling away so quickly now, the water spreading out between them and dry land, and she doesn’t know whether it’s relief or grief that stings behind her eyes as she watches it. She doesn’t know what she feels, really, only that she _does_ feel, so much and so powerfully that she can hardly breathe.

It all happened so fast, so efficiently. She feels a little dizzy from it all, queasy in a way that doesn’t quite reach her stomach like the lapping of the waves does. She feels like she’s drifting, not just in the obvious way but inside herself as well, like she’s leaving all the parts of her that understand themselves back there in Britannia, still hurting and trying so desperately to heal, while she floats away, heady and giddy and unable to make any sense of her feelings at all.

Apparently recognising that she’s in no mood for company right now, the others leave her alone. Amarice, as excitable as ever, darts and dashes about the deck, peeking into every little nook and cranny she can find, no doubt trying to figure out whether she can get away with thieving any of the merchandise. Gabrielle rather doubts it, though she suspects the fact won’t stop her from trying anyway. If nothing else, it should make for a much-needed distraction later down the line when she inevitably has to bail her out of trouble with disgruntled merchants or sailors.

Xena, meanwhile, stands still and stoic, her face a mirror of Gabrielle’s own troubled feelings. She leans against the rail a short distance away, watching in silence as the dock, as the island, as _Britannia_ drifts away into the darkening evening, the sea mist and the creaking wood. Gabrielle finds herself watching Xena for a moment instead of the waves, wondering what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. Is it harder for her to leave than she expected it to be? Is she thinking of Boadicea, of her own mistakes, of Gabrielle’s?

It’s so sad, she thinks. No matter their intentions, bad decisions always seem to find them in Britannia.

Gabrielle wants to go to her. She wants to comfort her, stand by her side like she always has before in times of pain or conflict, but she knows that she can’t. It’s no more her place to help Xena through her feelings now than it was Xena’s place to help her through her own back in the temple when she suffered and struggled and hurt. There are things that even the deepest bonds can’t touch, and pains in their past that transcend either one of them, moments when they can both look at each other and say _“you weren’t there”_.

Gabrielle knows that it cuts both ways. She can’t possibly comprehend what Boadicea’s death must mean to Xena, how it must have felt to watch her friend take her own life and know that there was nothing in the world she could have done to prevent it.

Xena never wanted to come back here. Maybe she knew by instinct, as she so often seems to know these things by instinct, that the struggle between Rome and Britannia was too fraught for one militia to handle. Maybe she, like Gabrielle, was afraid of her memories, the ever-present shadow of both their past mistakes. She could have had a thousand reasons for ignoring or refusing Boadicea’s call for help, but once again Gabrielle took the choice away from her. She pushed and she pressed, and she insisted that she knew better, that what they were doing was for the greater good. She’s the one who insisted they come here. She’s the one responsible, and she hates that once again Xena is the one forced to carry the weight of it.

Gabrielle feels so, so guilty. She feels like Xena must have felt the last time they came here. Xena, who so obsessed with Rome, with Caesar, with all her old vendettas and reopened wounds, who threw herself into someone else’s war with so much fervour and passion, so much violence that she locked out everything else, that she let her closest friend, her almost-lover be sacrificed to a dark, foreign god. Gabrielle was broken inside, almost broken outside too, and Xena didn’t notice at all until it was too late. She carried that around for so long, even let Gabrielle believe that the fault lay in her own hands, and it tears her open to look around and realise that they’re here again, years later, and still feeling the same way.

This time, the reverse is true. Xena is the one carrying the pain this time, and Gabrielle is the one who can’t bear to see her own part in it. She would give anything in the world to go to Xena and say, _‘I’m so sorry for making you feel now what I felt back then’_.

She doesn’t, though. She knows that Xena would not accept the apology, that she would not accept anything from her. ‘ _It’s over, Gabrielle,’_ she would say instead. _‘It’s over and done, and now we both need to move on.’_

Gabrielle knows that’s true. She just doesn’t know how to do it.

*

A couple of hours later, the last shadows of Britannia have vanished over the horizon, and the sun has followed suit.

Xena has disappeared too, wandering off without a word some time ago. Gabrielle thinks she saw her skulk down below deck, but she can’t be certain; by now she has other things on her mind. The water isn’t rough yet, but it’s definitely getting choppy, and the further they get from visible land,the more ominously her stomach starts to churn. It’s hard to stay focused on what Xena’s doing and where she’s going when the only thing keeping her in one piece is staring at the horizon.

It doesn’t help as much as she wants it to. There is nothing in the distance, only water, and the swelling darkness is no friend to her vision. She can’t see very much, and there is very little out here to tether her.

She doesn’t bother to try the pressure points this time. Maybe they’ll work or maybe they won’t; she suspects they will because her mind is clearer now, but she doesn’t care. The discomfort is bearable, definitely unpleasant but not nearly so awful as it was on the outbound journey; she is in control, at least for now, and she will not be dependant on Xena’s tricks if she doesn’t have to be. If Britannia has taught her anything, it’s that she can’t let herself depend on things that might let her down when she needs them most.

So, then, she endures. It’s a heady combination, a little bit of masochism mixed with a lot of the same stubborn pride that cursed her on the way here; she knows that it’s a weakness, the need to be strong, but she can’t stave it off while she’s still afraid of the alternative. Being weak is better than being helpless, she knows; _anything_ is better than being helpless.

She wonders if she’ll ever stop feeling that way, if she’ll wake up one morning and realise that she’s not, that she never will be again. Xena insists that she sees her, that she knows her. Ares claimed that he saw potential in her. Amarice says that she sees Ephiny in her. Gabrielle isn’t sure she believes any one of them; when she looks down at herself, all she sees is someone who tries and tries, who keeps trying even when she knows she won’t win.

She tries now, too, focuses all that futility on her seething stomach and the choppy horizon line. It’s a challenge, swallowing the seasickness without giving in to it, but the effort helps her to stay focused. This is a fight she can win; at the very least, it’s one that won’t destroy her if she loses. It might be messy, but it’s clean in all the ways that matter. It might make her curse everything when the waves and the wind surge, might make her hate her traitorous body, but it won’t be the end of her. Her body can heal; she knows that because it has. After so many days spent struggling against her soul, her stomach seems like such a simple opponent.

“You know what I think?”

Gabrielle groans, lets her head fall forward to hit the rail. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that it’s Amarice; she can hear the self-satisfaction in her voice.

“No,” she answers, stifling a sigh. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

Amarice laughs. “Pfft. Not if you’re gonna be like that about it.”

That gets a chuckle out of Gabrielle. It’s not exactly weak, but she holds a lot of it back because she’s afraid of yielding too much control while her body is shaking.

“All right, all right.” She lifts her head, puts on a mask of curiosity. “Please, Amarice, tell me what you think.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely…” She’s definitely smirking now; the moonlight makes her teeth look very sharp. “I think you _like_ being miserable.”

“Oh?” Gabrielle doesn’t even pretend to be affronted. She tells herself it’s because she doesn’t have the strength, and definitely not because it might be a little bit true. “And why is that?”

“Dunno.” She’s still smiling, but the sharpness is fading. Suddenly, she looks almost sad. “I guess I just can’t remember the last time I saw you and you weren’t.”

It’s a fair point, but that doesn’t stop Gabrielle shaking her head. “I’m not miserable right now.”

“Oh yeah?” Unsurprisingly, Amarice doesn’t look convinced. “Because, like, I could be wrong, but seasick and sweaty and sulking doesn’t exactly scream _‘look how not-miserable I am’_.”

“I’m none of those things,” Gabrielle counters automatically. Amarice quirks a brow and presses a pointed, deliberate hand against her forehead. Gabrielle doesn’t pull away, but she does glare. “All right. Fine. I’m not sulking, at least. And I’m really not miserable.”

“You sure?”

Gabrielle opens her mouth to laugh off the question, but something in Amarice’s face stops her before she can get the words out. For all her teasing and smirking and bravado, Amarice is actually very serious about this. After everything they’ve been through together over the last few days, all the things that Amarice was forced to seen in her, all the things she should never have been forced to see at all, maybe it shouldn’t be a revelation that some corner of her is still so easily worried, but somehow it is.

“Amarice…” she hears herself stammer, and her own voice is a kind of revelation too.

“I was just asking.” She says it far too quickly, though, and when she tries to cover herself with another smile, the sharpness strikes in a different way. “You don’t gotta get all defensive or whatever. It’s just… it’s kinda hard to know what you’re feeling when you get all glassy-eyed like that, when you’re all stoic and serious and swallowing.”

The word makes her swallow again. Her stomach doesn’t thank her for it.

“There’s…” Her voice is very thick now. She hopes Amarice thinks it’s from emotion and not the other thing. “There’s a difference between swallowing and sulking.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just… you have this _thing_ about you, you know? You make people… you make _me_ want to try and make it better. Or something. But then… then I get here, and I try that, but then you get this look on your face, this sad, weird look, like… like you don’t want it. Like you don’t want me to try, or maybe like you don’t really want it to get better. Like you… like you feel _safer_ or something when you’re not feeling so good.”

That’s a strange way of putting it, but it definitely holds a measure of truth. Ever since she and Xena were crucified, Gabrielle has found that she really does feel better when she’s fighting something. It doesn’t matter whether it’s bandits or warlords or something inside of herself, a bad wound or a sour stomach, just so long as it’s something she can feel. More and more, she finds that she doesn’t care what or who she’s fighting, so long as it’s there, so long as it’s real and tangible, so long as it’s physical and it brings the promise of pain.

She wonders if it’s a kind of self-flagellation, a way of punishing herself for what happened in Rome, for all the ways she failed to protect Xena when she needed her. She wonders if maybe it’s something deeper than that, if it’s become so much more profound since they set out for Britannia because a part of her is learning how Xena must have felt, because she’s finally finding inside of herself that dark place that has driven Xena for so much of her life. The closer she steps to the warrior’s path, the better she understands it, and the more it frightens her.

It’s not just about feeling bad or being miserable. It’s not just about enduring the pain of a festering wound or the nausea of seasickness or the nails of a Roman cross; it’s not just about being in pain and gritting her teeth and telling herself that it makes her strong. It’s the thrall of physicality, not just the violence but the fighting itself, the parts of her that want to shout and scream struggling against the parts of her that refuse to surrender. Faced as she has been over the last few days with old wounds that scar her heart and soul, the places that echo, again and again, _“it hurts inside,”_ she has never been so thankful for the simplicity of suffering in body alone.

“Maybe you’re right,” she muses aloud, and leans into the rail with her whole body.

“It’s like…” Amarice is the one swallowing now, not nauseous but nervous. “It’s like when we were in that place. You remember? When I was… when you were… when we…” She turns her face to the wind, the flush on her neck saying the words she’s too embarrassed to say herself. “You know. You wanted it like that. I said… y’know, I warned you it was gonna… and it… and that… that’s what you wanted. You wanted it to.”

It’s adorable, the way she mumbles and blushes her way through it, the way she makes something simple into a mess of complexity, the way that turns the complicated things into something simpler in turn. It’s hilarious, too, as if they haven’t shared so much more than a moment of physical intimacy. Gabrielle smiles, bites back her discomfort just enough to rest a hand on Amarice’s arm, to calm her with an almost-steady smile.

“I did want that,” she says. “I wanted to… take it back, I guess. I wanted to hurt on my terms. Does that make any sense?”

“Makes lots of sense.” Amarice shrugs. “It just seems like you’re doing that sort of thing a lot lately, you know? Like… like you always gotta do everything ‘on your terms’. Like you’re so scared of what’ll happen if you don’t. Like…” She takes a deep breath, steadying herself or maybe trying to steady Gabrielle. “Like you’re so freaking scared of someone else hurting you again, you feel like you gotta hurt yourself first.”

“Maybe I do feel that way,” Gabrielle muses, mostly to herself. It feels new, but not really like a revelation. “Is that such a terrible thing?”

Amarice thinks about that for a few long minutes. It’s a strange kind of silence that falls on them now, heavy but not strained, the kind of peaceful quiet that Gabrielle has shared with Xena more times than she can count. She could lose herself in a silence like this, and not care one bit if she never got an answer to her question.

She does get an answer, though. It takes a long time, but she gets it. “Nah,” Amarice says at last, bright-eyed even in the dark. “It’s not terrible. Don’t think you’re really capable of doing something _terrible_ , you know?”

“I am,” Gabrielle says. The certainty stings.

“If you say so.” She doesn’t look particularly convinced, though. “Point is, that whole self-suffering thing… it makes dumb idiots like me wanna be… you know. For you.”

“I know,” Gabrielle says, very sadly. “I’m sorry, Amarice.”

Amarice shrugs, but doesn’t tell her not to be.

They stand there like that for some time, Gabrielle sweating and swallowing and trying maybe a little too hard to look like she isn’t suffering, and Amarice watching her like a hawk, wordless and worried. Once or twice, it looks like she wants to say something; she opens her mouth or clears her throat or gives Gabrielle the kind of look that desperately wants to attach itself to words, but she cuts herself off each time before she can get any of them out. Gabrielle can’t tell if it’s shyness that quiets her or if there’s something else, doubt or perhaps self-consciousness. Neither of those things have ever been a problem for her before.

It’s a long, long time before she does find the courage to speak, and when she does it’s very softly, as though a part of her is desperately hoping that the sea will drown her out.

“Doesn’t have to be like that, you know.”

Gabrielle blinks. Her eyes fight to focus in the darkening night. “Like what?”

“Like, all this stoic serious swallowing stuff. If you wanna…” She’s gripping the rail almost as tightly as Gabrielle, and her knuckles are very white. “If you wanna work through this stuff… you know, if that’s what you want… there’s other ways. We could… I mean, if you…”

She gestures, vague and very shy. Gabrielle, convinced that she knows where this is heading, shakes her head and sighs. “Oh, Amarice. You know that’s not…”

“Huh?” Amarice frowns for about half a second, then turns as pale as Gabrielle as the realisation strikes home. “Not _that_ , you idiot! You got any idea how awful you look right now?” She shakes her head, laughing just a little too high, like the relief is drowning out her self-control. “Jeez. In what language does ‘seasick and sweaty and sulking’ mean ‘sexy’?”

Gabrielle flushes. She’s not sure she’s ever felt quite so humiliated in her life. “I…”

“Right,” Amarice mutters, snorting a little. “I forgot. You’re with Xena. I bet she thinks the whole hurt-comfort thing is hot.”

“That’s not…” She sighs. It’s reassuring to know that Amarice is taking all of this in stride, that she’s not letting what happened in Britannia influence what passes for friendship between them. Still, Gabrielle would sooner not place herself as the butt of this particular off-colour joke. “Amarice…”

“Okay, okay…” She flashes a final grin, then sobers. “Look. I just meant… you’ve not lost your guts yet, right?”

“Yet,” Gabrielle echoes dryly. “Nice to know you have faith in me to hold on to my dignity for more than—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Amarice cuffs her on the shoulder. “You know what I mean. You’re not all strung out and delirious this time. You’re healthy enough, right?”

That’s a question not easily answered right now, but Gabrielle doesn’t want to mention that. “For what?”

“A _rematch_ , dummy.” She says it like it’s obvious, like this is where the entire conversation was heading all along, like Gabrielle really is an idiot for not following along. “You know, since you cheated the last time you tried to teach me.”

Gabrielle can’t help herself; she’s offended. “Since I did _what_?”

“You heard me. I dunno all the rules with those things—” She waves at the sai in Gabrielle’s boots. “—but I’m pretty sure locking lips with your opponent counts as cheating. In Britannia, anyhow. Dunno how it works in Greece. And since we were in Britannia at the time…”

It takes Gabrielle a moment or two to piece together what she’s talking about, to think back and remember their sparring match in the forest that morning, the way it ended with the two of them pressed together in more ways than one. _“It’s an Amazon thing,”_ they decided, because they both knew even then that it could never be anything more than that. Apparently they’ve come far enough now that Amarice can look back on that moment and only remember the defeat, the moment she lay sprawled on her back with Gabrielle hovering over her, smug in victory. Apparently they’ve come far enough that, at least to her, that is the only important part. Inexplicably, unexpectedly, Gabrielle finds that touching beyond words.

“You want a training session?” She takes great care to leave all the sentiment out of her voice. “Now? _Here_?”

Amarice looks at her steadily. “Why not?” she asks, sincere. “I mean, sure, it didn’t work out so well the last time… but you’re doing okay now, right? I mean, your wound’s all healed and stuff, and you’ve got that whole seasickness mess under control. Uh, sort of.” She blinks a couple of times, seeming to notice the colour of Gabrielle’s skin for the first time, then shrugs. “We can stop if you gotta hurl.”

“That’s… comforting,” Gabrielle manages, then thinks about it in seriousness. “It’s not as bad this time around, but…”

It’s hard to know for sure whether that’s really true, or whether she’s just more stubborn and less frightened this time around, but either way Amarice is right: she is keeping her stomach under control, and her shoulder has been mostly painless for a good few days now. There’s no reason not to indulge herself, not to indulge both of them, and there’s something deliciously tempting in the idea of working out her feelings through violence the way Xena does, of calming herself now with the sai in her hands and her muscles straining and tight and strong.

“Well, that’s good enough, right?” Amarice presses. Her eyes are sparkling now, her face lit up with a depth of excitement that she doesn’t even try to repress. “Come on. It’ll give you a fun distraction from all the rolling and the rocking and—”

“Amarice.” The reminder makes her clap a hand over her mouth. “ _Please_.”

Amarice smirks again. “The _water_ ,” she finishes, all innocence. “I mean, it’d be a different kind of miserable, wouldn’t it? A different kind of ‘hurt’ or whatever, when it’s me kicking your butt and not, like, the ocean.”

Gabrielle scowls. She can’t help herself. “The ocean isn’t kicking my—”

“ _Sure_ it’s not.”

It sounds like a challenge when she says it like that, and the sharp edge is back in her teeth. It’s deliberate, of course, and it works perfectly. It sets fire to the part of Gabrielle that is proud, the part of her that still thinks she needs to take care of herself every second of every day, that still thinks she has to fight everything all by herself.

Whatever might happen between them now, this at least is a moment of normalcy, a calm bay in the middle of an ocean that won’t stop heaving. Gabrielle can feel the sincerity in Amarice, all the places where they’re connected, where Amarice has seen her worst, most terrible memories, where she knows exactly how to help her through the moments when they surge to the surface.

It’s a strange feeling, looking at someone knowing that they’ve seen everything and that it hasn’t changed anything. Amarice has seen things in her that even Xena hasn’t, maybe that Xena never will, and Gabrielle is so, so thankful for that. She is thankful to Xena, thankful that she understands, that she never asked, never wondered, never let this become something it wasn’t. She is thankful that Amarice understands too, thankful that she sees what she sees and knows what she knows, that she too recognises the lines that no-one ever drew. She is thankful beyond words that she has so many beautiful, wonderful people in her life who understand so many things, who love her and each other so, so much.

It’s no coincidence, Gabrielle knows, that Amarice is offering her what Gabrielle offered the last time they stood on a deck like this. It’s no coincidence, either, that she is looking at her like this, with her eyes so bright and her smile so very sharp.

 _“A rematch,”_ Amarice says, and _“it’ll give you a fun distraction.”_ What she means, Gabrielle understands now, is _‘let’s go back to the place we were before’_. She’s thinking of a time before Britannia, before Gabrielle remembered and relived and broke all over again, before they kissed and huddled together in a cave, before Amarice heard her most secret stories and healed her with a new kind of hurt. Before the temple, before those awful people who made that place into something not so awful at all, before she rested on her back under the stars, reaching for scorched earth, feeling the fire ignite inside her again. Before _“it’ll hurt,”_ and before _“I know,”_ Before _‘anything’_ became _‘everything’_.

Gabrielle swallows back the nausea sticking to her throat. She steps away from the rail, summons a smile, and draws her sai.

“Don’t lift your shoulders,” she says, and basks in Amarice’s laughter.

*

After maybe an hour or two, Amarice grows sleepy and sloppy.

“You win,” she mumbles at last, and storms off to lick her wounds.

Gabrielle wonders how much of the surrender really came from fatigue, and how much was simply the part of her that wants to leave Gabrielle with a sense of victory. There have been too few of those lately, and Amarice’s warrior instincts must be screaming that a victory in battle is the best thing anyone could hope for. It doesn’t really work that way for Gabrielle, but the look on Amarice’s face as she disappears below deck is so pleased, so _proud_ that she can’t bring herself to point that out.

She doesn’t follow, though. Given the hour, she can’t exactly blame Amarice for being exhausted, but she’s far from tired herself. Distraction or not, she’s still feeling wretched, and she knows her condition too well to expect that sleep will come to her any time soon. Restlessness and long, miserable nights are just another part of being on board a ship, she’s learned, and one she’ll just have to accept.

She stays above deck, leaning against the rail, breathing in the cool night air and trying not to think too much. Thinking makes her feel sick, in a way that has very little to do with the rolling water.

She closes her eyes. She can feel the boat rocking under her feet, can feel the salt spraying her face, and it’s hard to tell which of the two has the greater effect on her. The motion sours her stomach but the salt soothes it, and the two of them combine with the darkness to leave her feeling suspended and strung out, reminding her with every swell and surge and splash that she’s here, floating between two very different worlds.

It’s a long voyage from Britannia to Greece. Gabrielle knows that they won’t really be any safer back home than they were on the island, but it’s a different kind of danger there. It’s a familiar, simple kind of danger, warlords and bandits and immortals; it’s the kind of danger Gabrielle is used to by now, the kind she finds almost comfortable. It’s danger like Xena’s eyes after a heated battle, like the want in her when she pins Gabrielle to a tree or into the grass, when she’s desperate and hungry and demands more than Gabrielle can give. It’s _their_ danger, a danger they chose for themselves.

Britannia is nothing like that. Britannia is tangled and twisted and untamed; it takes and it takes and it tears apart anyone who tries to fight back. Gabrielle won’t miss Britannia at all, but she will definitely miss the pieces of herself that it shattered or stole.

She bows her head until her forehead is resting against the rail. The wood is wet and very cold, but it grounds her a little just the same. The deck is pitching underneath her feet, but she feels safer here than she felt for the last few days’ worth of dry land. Untethered and unfettered, she feels so terribly sick and so far away from everything, but the distance doesn’t frighten her the way it once did. The place that hurt her is gone now, long vanished from the horizon, but the place she calls home is still so far away. She feels so strange. She feels—

“Better.”

Gabrielle bolts upright, head spinning a little from the violence of the movement.

“Xena,” she gets out, startled but not really surprised. At this time of night, it could hardly be anyone else. “Do you have to sneak up on me like that?”

Xena laughs. “Got to keep your reflexes sharp somehow,” she says, and of course she doesn’t apologise. She does soften a little, though, laughter dissolving into a smile. “You’re looking better this time around.”

“That’s because the sea is calmer this time around.”

“You sure about that?” The teasing, knowing edge to her voice is as familiar as it is unwanted; Gabrielle scowls, and of course that just makes Xena laugh again. “Doesn’t feel much calmer to me.”

“Your stomach isn’t as sensitive as mine,” Gabrielle points out. “Trust me. It’s definitely calmer. It’s like… the sea is at peace.”

“Uh huh. The _sea_.”

Gabrielle rolls her eyes, regretting it almost immediately when her body goes tight. She knows what Xena’s implying, of course, but she knows just as well that it’s nowhere near the truth. Much as she wishes it was, _she’s_ not the one at peace. Maybe she’s a little closer to it than she was before, but she knows her battered soul well enough to know that it’s still a long, long way away from the inner calm she once took for granted. She’s still too exposed, too raw, too much of so many things she’s been trying to exorcise from herself. Even after all this time, she’s still too _weak_.

“Xena…” she starts, but of course that’s as far as her body lets her get. Acid in her throat, one hand over her mouth, she grips the rail with the other and wills herself to stay under control.

Xena rubs her back. It helps. “Like I said,” she murmurs, leaning in to kiss her knuckles, shaky and white where they’re pressed to her lips. “It doesn’t feel much calmer to me.”

Gabrielle sighs, groans, then carefully pulls her hand away. “Not one word, Xena. Not _one_ word.”

Xena chuckles. “You could always…” She gives her a little tap on the wrist. “Just a suggestion.”

It’s telling, the way she does that, and it says far more than it seems to at a glance. Apparently she’s attentive enough to know that Gabrielle hasn’t even bothered to try the pressure points this time. She wonders if she knows why that is, if she understands the pull of this particular kind of masochism. She wonders if a younger Xena, uncut and unproven, ever felt the need to suffer like this, to put her body through unpleasant things just so she could come out the other side and say that she survived. She can’t imagine Xena ever being that weak, but she must have been once. Not even warrior princesses break out of the womb with swords already in their hands.

“I don’t need them,” she says, shaking off the image with some effort. She touches her wrist guards, draws comfort in the cool metal. “Like you said, it’s better this time.”

Xena makes a noise in her throat, frustration mingling with a strange, unexpected kind of empathy. “All right,” she says after a beat. “If that’s what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Gabrielle confesses, very quietly. It’s much harder, talking about this sort of thing with Xena than with Amarice. It makes her feel very young and very small. “I just know it’s easier feeling sick in my stomach than in my soul.”

She expects Xena to laugh at her for that, to nudge her shoulder and call her a _bard_ , to twist the word until it’s almost a kind of insult. She does that sometimes when Gabrielle gets like this, introspective and broken, when she talks about the soul like it’s something tangible, something certain and sure; she does it because she’s neither of those things, certain or sure, because Gabrielle’s faith frightens her sometimes and making it small is her way of coping with that. It’s not cruel, just a little cool. Gabrielle would understand if she chose that route now, but she doesn’t.

There’s no laughter in her now, good-natured or insulting or anything in between. There’s none of her gentle chiding or quiet teasing, no smiling or head-shaking or tight-lipped quips about a ‘poet’s spirit’. There’s just a sad, sober look on her face and a tenderness than breaks Gabrielle’s heart. She leans in to kiss her on the forehead, and the contact makes her feel more connected than she has in a long, long time.

“I know what you mean,” Xena says, a whisper like a shared secret.

“Do you?” Gabrielle asks.

“Yeah.” Her kisses drift lower, the corner of her eye and then her cheek. “Yeah, I do.”

Gabrielle nods, turns back to the horizon. “Xena, I’m so sorry.” She doesn’t know where the words come from, but they rock her heart as surely as the boat is rocking her stomach. “You were right all along. We never should have gone back to Britannia. I should have listened to you. I should have…”

“No,” Xena says. The word is a heavy weight; she doesn’t want to talk about this, Gabrielle can tell, but like always she can’t deny her anything. “ _You_ were right, Gabrielle. I was wrong.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. “It didn’t make a difference,” she says, and hates the way it makes Xena flinch. “We didn’t help. We just came back more broken than we were when we left.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Xena says.

Gabrielle knows that it is. It’s a different kind of break, maybe a little cleaner, but it’s there just the same, cracked and fractured in places that were whole before. She thinks of Boadicea, of the thunderclouds in Xena’s eyes when she called her weak, when she said she was a coward. That’s not anger, she knows; it’s pain. Xena will probably take it to her grave before she’ll ever admit or accept it, but Gabrielle knows her, and she knows what she sees.

“Xena…” She takes a deep breath. “I know you weren’t friends…”

“No, we weren’t.” Xena sighs, regretful. “But that’s not important.”

“It’s not,” Gabrielle says. “But it is. Xena, how can you say I was right? It doesn’t matter if you were friends at the end. You were once. You could have been again. And I made you go back there just to watch her die.”

Xena studies her for a long, long moment. “Did you?” she asks, as quiet as a breath.

Gabrielle blinks. She doesn’t understand the question. “Huh?”

“Was it really _just_ for Boadicea that you wanted us to go back there?”

Given the way things turned out, the question isn’t exactly a surprise, but it steals Gabrielle’s breath just the same. She hasn’t let herself think too much about it, not least of all because she hasn’t wanted to wonder what it might mean if she looks inside herself and sees that there’s some truth to it, that maybe she did have her own selfish reasons for dragging Xena back into their shared and separate nightmare.

It’s possible. It might even be probable. Amarice thinks that she enjoys being miserable, that suffering makes her feel strong, and though she’s loathe to admit it Gabrielle knows that it’s true. Maybe there was a part of her that wanted to hurt in Britannia as well, that was so tired of pushing all that pain down, of driving it back or resisting it or ignoring it, of looking back to that chapter in her life and seeing only a blank, empty page. Maybe there was a part of her that wanted a chance to let it out and let it breathe.

What does that say about her, though? What does it say about _Xena_ , that she was willing to put herself through so much pain and loss and grief just to watch Gabrielle tear herself to pieces and fail once again to pick them back up? Gabrielle can’t know for sure whether or not that part of herself really did influence her, if that little masochistic corner of her soul wanted a chance to be broken again. All she knows is that she’s the reason Xena was.

“I don’t know,” she says out loud. “Maybe. Maybe not. I…”

Xena nods and sighs. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

“Is it?” Gabrielle asks.

“As much as it can be,” Xena says, and shrugs. “Rome has its claws in Britannia now. History will tell what that means for the rest of us. For now…” She swallows tightly, looking almost as sick as Gabrielle feels, if just for a second or two. “Well. It is what it is. The empire that broke me and the island that broke you… they deserve each other, wouldn’t you say?”

Honestly, Gabrielle’s not sure she would say that. She’s not sure she’ll ever subscribe to Xena’s certainty that things will play out the same way no matter the players, that history is going to happen one way or another, that the stories will be told no matter whose hands are stained in blood or ink, that there is meaning and power in even the worst kind of defeat.

She knows why Xena thinks like that. She understands, though it’s hard sometimes. Xena has seen too much pain, too much death and destruction, too many people and places killed or taken or conquered; she has to believe that there’s more to it than mindless slaughter. She has to believe that Boadicea’s death will mean something in the end, that history will remember her and her people even if Rome eradicates them all.

Xena can’t accept the things that Gabrielle does, the simple, terrible fact that sometimes pain is just pain, that sometimes hurt just _hurts_. Maybe hers don’t run as deep as Gabrielle’s, or maybe they run deeper, but either way she doesn’t feel them the same way that Gabrielle does. They respond so differently, _feel_ so differently. It’s why things are difficult between them sometimes, but it’s also why they’re beautiful together. They can only deal with their own feelings in their own way, and try to understand each other’s. It’s all anyone can do.

The boat hits a wave, and for a lurching, sickening second the deck falls away under them. Gabrielle’s stomach heaves, but she doesn’t let the rest of her follow suit. She wants to vomit and she wants to cry, but she won’t allow herself to do either of those things when Xena is watching her.

“Are you…” Her voice breaks, so she tries again. “Are _we_ all right?”

Xena blinks, like she can’t believe she’s hearing the question. “Of course we are,” she says, soft and tender, like she’s afraid of shattering something if she says too much or speaks too loudly. “Gabrielle, we’re always all right. Don’t you know that by now? Don’t you see—”

“I see,” Gabrielle blurts out before she can finish. She’s speaking softly too, not tender but desperate. “I see you, Xena.”

“And I see _you_.” Xena pulls her in close, lips salt-sharp and wet against her temples, her cheek, her mouth. “All of you, Gabrielle. Not just the parts you think are important.”

Gabrielle shakes her head. “I don’t…”

“I do.” Even in the dark, her smile is the most beautiful thing Gabrielle has ever seen. “I know you could kill a man at a hundred paces if you wanted to, and I know that every single time you would choose not to. I know the kind of warrior you could be, and the kind of woman you are. I know the things that you can do, and I know the things you never will. You could shake the world, Gabrielle, with words or weapons or with anything you want, and I know you think that’s the only important thing, but it’s _not_.”

Gabrielle thinks of Amarice. Eyes wide, pupils blown, tongue loosened by some foreign herb. She remembers the passion in her voice, the way she begged Gabrielle to embrace the parts of that feel and love and care, the way she begged her to turn away from the warrior she’s trying to become, the hollow places where she aches, wants, _needs_ to be strong, the way she didn’t say _‘Xena loves the you that cares’_.

Maybe she does. But that’s not what Gabrielle needs. “Xena, I…”

“I know.” Xena shakes her head, kisses her silent. “Anyone can see your strength, Gabrielle. Anyone with eyes can see how beautiful it makes you. But your pain, your grief, your losses, your struggles, all the ways you think you’re broken and helpless and _weak_ …” Her breath catches, and she chokes. “They’re important too. And they make you just as beautiful.”

It’s hard to know how to respond to that. Gabrielle’s not sure Xena’s right about her being able to shake the world, but she can definitely feel the world shaking around her now; the deck yaws, and it’s not just her body that feels like it’s been thrown off-balance. Her whole self feels strange, rocked right down to the depths, and she presses herself against Xena because she is the only thing that will always keep her steady.

“I’m sorry.” She hunches her shoulders, presses her face to Xena’s breastplate. She feels ashamed and lost. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you come with me. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you see…”

“You are,” Xena tells her, like it’s all so simple. “You’re letting me see it now.” She breathes, chest moving against Gabrielle’s skin. “Gabrielle, what you’re feeling… it doesn’t end at that temple just because it began there. You’ve carried it with you for a long, long time. It’s not going anywhere.”

Gabrielle knows that’s true. She’s known it for a while. Still, it’s a blow to hear it said aloud. “I thought it would. I wanted it to. I wanted…”

“I know you did.” Xena holds her close, rocks her in rhythm with the rolling waves. “But these things… they’re a part of us, Gabrielle. You can’t tear them out of you just by spending a little time in the place that inflicted them.”

That’s true too. Gabrielle remembers killing the deer, remembers her body responding so viscerally to the blood on her hands. She can’t remember the last time she reacted like that.

“I should have asked you to come with,” she says, more to herself than to Xena. “You would’ve told me that. You would’ve made sure I understood.” The shame grows rough in her chest, rattling like a broken bone. “I wouldn’t have let myself believe… I wouldn’t have…”

“No.” Xena’s voice is firm, her hands strong and steady on her back. “Gabrielle, this was your journey. You had to take it your way. You had to make peace with it, as best you could, without me there to hold your hand.”

“But I _didn’t_ make peace with it. I…”

“You made a start. You went there, and you survived, and that’s…” She pulls her in close, holds her so tightly that Gabrielle is sure she can feel her heartbeat even through the burnished breastplate. “Gabrielle, you’re more whole now than you’ve been since… well, a long, long time ago.”

“I don’t feel whole,” Gabrielle admits, soft and almost ashamed. “I feel like I’m just broken in different places now.”

“Yeah,” Xena says. “I know.”

She sounds so much like she did that morning all those years ago, when she woke Gabrielle from her nightmare, when she held her and rocked her and loved her just like this, when neither of them knew that Hope was growing inside of her. _“Yeah, I know,”_ she said, when Gabrielle told her about the dream. She tried so hard to make her believe that it was all right, that she would survive, that together they would get through it.

They did. It took years, and more complications than either of them could imagine, but they did. Gabrielle only wishes yhat Xena had told her the other side of _through_ looks exactly the same.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel whole,” she says after a moment.

Xena smiles. “Maybe you won’t. Then again, maybe you will.” Her smile is warm, her eyes dark with love. “You do look better, Gabrielle. Whether that means ‘whole’, I don’t know, but you do look better. And I’m not just talking about the seasickness or the fact that your shoulder isn’t festering any more. I’m talking about _you_.” Her thumb finds the edge of her mouth, coaxes a smile. “You’re finally starting to look like yourself.”

“Oh?” Gabrielle feels so vulnerable, so visible. “And what does ‘myself’ look like?”

Xena kisses her on the lips, slow and beautiful, then pulls back to look at her. Her eyes don’t reflect the stars like Amarice’s did. They only reflect Gabrielle.

“ _Everything_ ,” she says.

*

Later, alone with the sea and her seething stomach, Gabrielle thinks about that.

It’s hard to swallow, harder to accept, the idea that these hurts will always be inside of her, that no matter what she does or how strong she becomes there will always be a part of her tied to that temple, to the scorched earth that was once an altar, to a tangled, twisted, untamed island whose name still makes her tremble. When she looks down and sees it inside herself, it feels like weakness, like cowardice, like all those terrible things she’s worked so hard to banish; when she sees it in herself, she sees something small and worthless, but when she looks up at Xena and hears those words in her voice, suddenly they become something else, something that doesn’t make her want to break the body to soothe the soul.

Xena knows. She knows so much that Gabrielle doesn’t, that Amarice doesn’t, that even Ephiny didn’t. She knows so much about so many things, and when she says _“they’re a part of us,”_ Gabrielle can almost believe she really does mean _‘us’_ , the two of them together. Gabrielle knows that Xena’s demons aren’t bound to her own, that their struggles are as separate as their souls are connected; Xena’s fights are always with people, while Gabrielle’s always seem to rage inside of herself. They fight different battles, but when it’s all over they always help each other to get back up.

Gabrielle doesn’t know for sure that that’s enough, but she has to believe it is. She might never be able to hear those words — _Britannia_ or _Dahak_ or _sacrifice_ — and not tremble under the weight of them. She might never be able to put a blade through a soldier or a bandit or an animal and not scream as though it tore through her too. She might never be strong enough to hurt inside without wanting to twist it into something tangible and touchable and true. She might never find the faith to believe in the stars that she sees in Amarice’s eyes or the reflection of herself that she sees in Xena’s. She might never be who she wants to be, who she tries to be, who she aches to be, but she will keep trying.

Britannia will always be inside her, whether she likes it or not. The temple and the people who worshipped there, the old and the new, the things that happened to her, the things they made her feel and do, the things they forced her to become… they will always be parts of her, just like Xena says. She’s not sure she really wants to ever make peace with that, to accept as Xena has that this is who she is, that what they made her has helped her to become something else, that it has driven her closer to that version of herself she so desperately wants to see. She’s not sure she wants to believe that anything good could come from something so awful, but maybe she needs to.

It’s the one thing she’s always had, the one thing she’s always been. It’s the part of her, hidden or lost, that Amarice said she needed to claim back, the devastated openness in her face when she said, _“you can’t be more if you’re less”_ , the passion in Xena when she listed all of Gabrielle’s weaknesses and said _“they make you just as beautiful.”_ It’s the cock-eyed optimist, the wide-eyed innocent who left Poteidaia in search of adventure with a warrior princess, the young girl that lay broken in pieces the last time she caught a boat back from Britannia.

At times like this, those things feel like more of a burden than a blessing. The youth, the innocence, the _feeling_ … it’s a weight on her shoulders, a noose around her neck, a strangling, suffocating thing that keeps her alive even as it tightens. It won’t die, that innocence, no matter what the world throws at it, no matter how hard she herself tries to kill it. She wants it gone, wants to burn it away just like Dahak’s flames burned away her insides, to burn herself to ash until she rises again with nothing left but the strength and the sai. She wants to be reborn with none of those things that make her hurt, but she knows that she can’t. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be _her_.

She is what she is, and who she is. Every time she looks at herself lately, it seems that another piece of her has been shattered, another part of what she was stripped away and replaced with something painful and awful. When Xena said she looked whole, she wasn’t sure she could believe that; how could she be whole when she feels so broken? But it is true. She is shattered and sick and screaming, but she is still here. It takes strength to scream, and it takes strength to swallow down the sickness. It takes strength to be so shattered, and it takes strength to survive.

Xena knows that. Even when Gabrielle can’t see it inside herself, Xena does. She looks at her, picks out all of those jagged, broken pieces, puts them back together one by one, and sees the whole they make.

There is so much inside her now, not just of strength but of everything. She is faster, tougher, braver than she ever could have imagined. She is armed to the teeth, not just with sai or swords or staves but with her mind and her heart and her battered, bruised soul, with so much more than a weak little girl could ever be able to hold.

She is so much more, and she _has_ so much more, too. She has Xena and she has Amarice. She has her strength and her sai, her fire and her feelings. She has the parts of her that know how to fight and the parts of her that choose not to, the parts that hurt and the parts that care. She has her heart and her soul, broken and whole and everything in between. She has _herself_ …

…and yes, even now, she has hope.

***


End file.
